LI BRARY O F CONGRES S. *\ 



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k UNITED STATES OF AMEKICA.'I 




V 

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IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM, 



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CHAPTERS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION. 



JOHN S. HART, LL. D., 

PRINCIPAL OF THE NEW JERSEY STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 



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C PHILADELPHIA: 
ELDREDGE & BROTHER, 

17 AND 19 South Sixth Street. 
1868. 



LBIOIS 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

ELDREDGE & BROTHER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the Distiict Court of the United States for th( 

Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



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.JS^ 



J. FAGAN t SON, 

STEREOTYPE FOUNDERS, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



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PRINTED BY SHERMAN & CO. 



TO THE 

AND ESPECIALLY TO THE 

ALUMNI OF THE PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL, 

AND OF THE 

|Xnv Kn'^ey ^t^t^ W^axmnl ^t)x00t, 

THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS 

ARE 

MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
BY THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 

The views contained in this volume are the result of 
a prolonged and somewhat varied professional experi- 
ence. This experience includes the training of more 
than five thousand young men and of nearly one thou- 
sand young women, a large portion of them for the 
office of teachers ; and it has been gained in College, in 
Boarding School, in a city High School, and in a State 
Normal School. In all this prolonged and varied ex- 
perience, I have constantly put myself in the attitude 
of a learner, and my aim in the present volume is to 
place before the younger members of the profession, 
in the briefest and clearest terms possible, the lessons 
I have myself learned. • Beginning with the question. 
What is Teaching ? and ending with the wider ques- 
tion. What is Education? the book will be found to 
take a pretty free range over the whole field of practical 
inquiry among professional teachers. The thoughts 
presented are such as have been suggested to the writer 
in the school-room itself, while actively engaged either 
in teaching, or in superintending and directing the in- 
struction given by others. These thoughts are for the 
most part purposely given in short, detached chapters. 



VI PREFACE. 

each complete in itself. Such a method of presen- 
tation, though less imposing, seemed to have practical 
advantages for the reader too great to be neglected 
for the mere vanity of authorship. Often one can find 
leisure to read a chapter of five or six pages on some 
point complete in itself, when he might not feel like 
reaching it through an intervening network of connected 
and dependent propositions. At the same time, it 
should be observed, the topics though detached are not 
isolated. There is everywhere an underlying thread of 
connection, the whole being based upon, if not consti- 
tuting, a philosophy of education. 



CONTENTS. 



I. — What is Teaching? .... 9 

II. — The Art of Questioning . . It 

III. The Difference between Teaching 

AND Training 23 

ly. — Modes of Hearing Recitations . 21 

Y — On Observing a Proper Order in the 
Development of the Mental Facul- 
ties 32 

VI. Teaching Children what they do 

NOT Understand ... .42 

YII. Cultivating the Memory in Youth 47 

YIII. — Knowledge before Memory . . 56 

IX. — Power of Words . . . .61 

X. — The Study of Language . . 6*7 

XI, — Cultivating the Voice . . .69 

XII. — Eyes '72 

XIII. — Errors of the Cave . . . .15 

XIY. — Men of One Idea .... 18 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XY. — A Talent for Teaching . . .83 

XVL — Teaching Power . . . . 8t 

XVII. — Growing 91 

XYIII. — Loving the Children ... 95 

XIX. — Gaining the Affections of the Schol- 
ars 99 

XX. — The Obedience of Children . .103 

XXI. — Rarey as an Educator . . .108 

XXII. — A Boarding-School Experience . 112 

XXIII. — Phrenology 121 

XXIY. — Normal Schools 130 

XX Y. — Practice-Teaching . . . .141 

XXYI. — Attention as a Mental Faculty, and 

AS A Means of Mental Culture . 159 

XXYII. — Gaining the Attention . . .196 

XXYIIL — COUNSELS : 1. To a Young Teacher ; 
2. To A New Pupil ; 3. To a Young 
Lady on leaving School; 4. To 
A Pupil on entering a Normal 
School - .... 201 

XXIX. — An Argument for Common Schoo^ls 241 

XXX. — What is Education? . . 2t2 



IlSr THE SCHOOL-ROOM, 



I. 

WHAT IS TEACHING? 

TN the first place, teaching is not simply telling. A class 
^ may be told a thing twenty times over, and yet not 
know it. Talking to a class is not necessarily teaching. 
I have known many teachers who were brimful of infor- 
mation, and were good talkers, and who discoursed to their 
classes Avith ready utterance a large part of the time allotted 
to instruction; yet an examination of their classes showed 
little advancement in knowledge. 

There are several time-honored metaphors on this sub- 
ject, which need to be received with some grains of allow- 
ance, if we would get at an exact idea of what teaching is. 
Chiselling the rude marble into the finished statue ; giving 
the impression of the seal upon the soft wax ; pouring water 
into an empty vessel ; — all these comparisons lack one essen- 
tial element of likeness. The mind is, indeed, in one sense, 
empty, and needs to be filled. It is yielding, and needs to 
be impressed. It is rude, and needs 2:)olishing. But it is 
not, like the marble, tlie wax, or the vessel, a passive recip- 

9 



10 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

ient of external influences. It is itself a living power. 
It is acted upon only by stirring up its own activities. 
The operative upon mind, unlike the operative upon mat- 
ter, must have the active, voluntary co-operation of that 
upon which he works. The teacher is doing his work, 
only so far as he gets work from the scholar. The very 
essence and root of the work are in the scholar, not in the 
teacher. No one, in fact, in an important sense, is taught 
at all, except so far as he is self-taught. The teacher may- 
be useful, as an auxiliary, in causing this action on the 
part of the scholar. But the one, indispensable, vital thing 
in all learning, is in the scholar himself. The old Komans, 
in their word education (educere, to draw out), seem to 
have come nearer to the true idea than any other people 
have done. The teacher is to draw out the resources of 
the pupil. Yet even this word comes short of the exact 
tnith. The teacher must put in, as well as draw out. No 
process of mere pumping will draw out from a child's 
mind knowledge which is not there. All the power of 
the Socratic method, could it be applied by Socrates him- 
self, would be unavailing to draw from a child's mind, by 
mere questioning, a knowledge, for instance, of chemical 
afiinity, of the solar system, of the temperature of the 
Gulf Stream, of the doctrine of the resurrection. 

What, then, is teaching ? 

Teaching is causing any one to know. Now no one can 
be made to know a thing but by the act of his own powers. 
His own senses, his own memory, his own powers of reason, 
perception, and judgment, must be exercised. The func- 
tion of the teacher is to bring about this exercise of the 



WHAT IS TEACHING? 11 

pupil's faculties. The means to do this are infinite in 
variety. They should be varied according to the wants 
and the character of the individual to be taught. One 
needs to be told a thing ; he learns most readily by the 
ear. Another needs to use his eyes ; he must see a thing, 
either in the book, or in nature. But neither eye nor ear, 
nor any other sense or faculty, will avail to the acquisition 
of knowledge, unless the power of attention is cultivated. 
Attention, then, is the first act or power of the mind that 
must be roused. It is the very foundation of all progress 
in knowledge, and the means of awakening it constitute 
the first step in the educational art. 

When by any means, positive knowledge, facts, are once 
in possession of the mind, something must next be done to 
prevent their slipping away. You may tell a class the his- 
tory of a certain event ; or you may give them a descrip- 
tion of a certain place or person ; or you may let them 
read it; and you may secure such a degree of attention, that, 
at the time of the reading or the description, they shall 
have a fair, intelligible comprehension of what has been 
described or read. The facts are for the time actually in 
the possession of the mind. Now, if the mind was, ac- 
cording to the old notion, merely a vessel to be filled, the 
process would be complete. But mind is not an empty 
vessel. It is a living essence, with powers and processes 
of its own. And experience shows us, that in the case of 
a class of undisciplined pupils, facts, even when fairly 
placed in the possession of the mind, often remain there 
about as long as the shadow of a passing cloud remains 
upon the landscape, and make about as much impression. 



12 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

The teacher must seek, then, not only to get knowledge 
into the mind, but to fix it there. In other words, the 
power of the memory must be strengthened. Teaching, 
then, most truly, and in every stage of it, is a strictly co- 
operative process. You cannot cause any one to know, by 
merely pouring out stores of knowledge in his hearing, any 
more than you can make his body grow by spreading the 
contents of your market-basket at his feet. You must 
rouse his power of attention, that he may lay hold of, arid 
receive, and make his own, the knowledge you offer him. 
You must awaken and strengthen the power of memory 
within him, that he may retain what he receives, and thus 
grow in knowledge, as the body by a like process grows in 
strength and muscle. In other words, learning, so far as 
the mind of the learner is concerned, is a growth ; and 
teaching, so far as the teacher is concerned, is doing what- 
ever is necessary to cause that growth. 

Let us proceed a step farther in this matter. 

One of the ancients observes that a lamp loses none of 
its own light by allowing another lamp to be lit from it. 
He uses the illustration to enforce the duty of liberality 
in imparting our knowledge to others. Knowledge, he 
says, unlike other treasures, is not diminished by giving. 

The illustration fails to express the whole truth. This 
imparting of knowledge to others, not only does not im- 
poverish the donor, but it actually increases his riches. 
Docendo ^issimus. By teaching we learn. A man grows 
in knowledge by the very act of communicating it. The 
reason for this is obvious. In order to communicate to 
the mind of another a thought which is in our own mind, 



WHAT IS TEACHING? 13 

we must give to the thought definite shape and form. We 
must handle it, and pack it up for safe conveyance. Thus 
the mere act of giving a thought expression in words, 
fixes it more deeply in our own minds. Not only so ; we 
can, in fact, very rarely be said to be in full possession of 
a thought ourselves, until by the tongue or the pen we 
have communicated it to somebody else. The expression 
of it, in some form, seems necessary to give it, even in our 
own minds, a definite shape and a lasting impression. A 
man who devotes himself to solitary reading and study, 
but never tries in any way to communicate his acquisitions 
to the world, or to enforce his opinions upon others, rarely 
becomes a learned man. A great many confused, dreamy 
ideas, no doubt, float through the brain of such a man ; 
but he has little exact and reliable knowleds^e. The truth 
is, there is a sort of indolent, listless absorption of intel- 
lectual food, that tends to idiocy. I knew a person once, 
a gentleman of wealth and leisure, Avho having no taste 
for social intercourse, and no material wants to be sup- 
plied, which might have required the active exercise of 
his powers, gave himself up entirely to solitary reading, as 
a sort of luxurious self-indulgence. He shut himself up in 
his room, all day long, day after day, devouring one book 
after another, until he became almost idiotic by the pro- 
cess, and he finally died of softening of the brain. Had 
he been compelled to use his mental acquisitions in earning 
his bread, or had the love of Christ constrained him to 
use them in the instruction of the poor and the ignorant, 
he might have become not only a useful, but a learned 
man. 

2 



14 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

We see a beautiful illustration of this doctrine in the 
case of Sabbath-school teachers, and one reason why per- 
sons so engaged usually love their work, is the benefit 
which they find in it for themselves. I speak here, not 
of the spiritual, but of the intellectual benefit. By the 
process of teaching others, they are all the while learning. 
This advantage in their case is all the greater, because it 
advances them in a kind of knowledge in which, more than 
in any other kind of knowledge, men are wont to become 
passive and stationary. In ordinary worldly knowledge, 
our necessities make us active. The intercourse of busi- 
ness, and of pleasure even, makes men keen. On these sub- 
jects we are all the while bandying thoughts to and fro ; 
we are accustomed to give as well as take ; and so we keep 
our intellectual armor bright, and our thoughts well de- 
fined. But in regard to growth in religious knowledge, 
we have a tendency to be mere passive recipients, like the 
young man just referred to. Sabbath after Sabbath we 
hear good, instructive, orthodox discourses, but there is no 
active putting forth of our own powers in giving out what 
we thus take in, and so we never make it effectually our 
own. The absorbing process goes on, and yet we make no 
growth. The quiescent audience is a sort of exhausted 
receiver, into which the stream from the pulpit is peren- 
nially playing, but never making it full. Let a maji go 
back and ask himself, What actual scriptural knowledge 
have I gained by the sermons of the last six months ? 
What in fiict do I retain in my mind, at this moment, of 
the sermons I heard only a month ago? So far as the 
hearing of sermons is concerned, the Sabbath-school 



WHAT IS TEACHING? 15 

teacher may perhaps be no better off than other hearers. 
But in regard to general growth in religious knowledge, 
he advances more rapidly than his fellow- worshippers, 
because the exigencies of his class compel him to a state 
of mind the very opposite of this passive recipiency. He 
is obliged to be all the while, not only learning, but put- 
ting his acquisitions into definite shape for use, and the 
very act of using these acquisitions in teaching a class, 
fixes them in his own mind, and makes them more surely 
his own. 

I have used this instance of the Sabbath-school teacher 
because it enforces an important hint already given, as to 
the mode of teaching. Some teachers, especially m Sab- 
bath-schools, seem to be ambitious to do a great deal of 
talking. The measure of their success, in their own eyes, 
is their ability to keep up a continued stream of talk for 
the greater part of the hour. This is of course better tjian 
the embarrassing silence sometimes seen, where neither 
teacher nor scholar has anything to say. But at the best, it 
is only the pouring into the exhausted receiver enacted over 
again. We can never be reminded too often, that there is 
no teaching except so far as there is active cooperation on 
the part of the learner. The mind receiving must repro- 
duce and give back what it gets. This is the indispensable 
condition of making any knowledge really our own. The 
very best teaching I have ever seen, has been where the 
teacher said comparatively little. The teacher was of 
course brimful of the subject. He could give the needed 
information at exactly the right point, and in the right 
quantity. But for every word given by the teacher, there 



16 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

were many words of answering reproduction on the part 
of the scholars. Youthful minds under such tutelage 
grow apace. 

It is indeed a high and difficult achievement in the edu- 
cational art, to get young persons thus to bring forth their 
thoughts freely for examination and correction. A pleas- 
ant countenance and a gentle manner, inviting and inspir- 
ing confidence, have something to do with the matter. 
But, whatever the means for accomplishing this end, the 
end itself is indispensable. The scholar's tongue must be 
unloosed, as well as the teacher's. The scholar's thoughts 
must be broached, as well as the teacher's. Indeed, the 
statement needs very little qualification or abatement, that 
a scholar has learned nothing from us except what he has 
exjDressed to us again in words. The teacher who is accus- 
tomed to harangue his scholars with a continuous stream 
of words, no matter how full of weighty meaning his 
words may be, is yet deceiving himself, if he thinks that 
his scholars are materially benefited by his intellectual 
activity, unless it is so guided as to awaken and exercise 
theii's. If, after a suitable period, he will honestly exam- 
ine his scholars on the subjects, on which he has himself 
been so productive, he will find that he has been only 
pouring water into a sieve. Teaching can never be this 
one-sided process. Of all the things we attempt, it is the 
one most essentially and necessarily a cooperative process. 
There must be the joint action of the teacher's mind and 
the scholar's mind. A teacher teaches at all, only so far 
CIS he causes this coactive energy of the pupil's mind. 



II. 

THE ART OF QUESTIONING. 

THE measure of a teacher's success is uot what he him- 
self does, but . what he gets his scholars to do. In 
nothing is this more noticeable, than in the different modes 
of putting a question to a scholar. One teacher will put a 
question in such a manner as to find out exactly how much 
or how little of the subject the child knows, and thereby 
encourage careful preparation ; to give the pupil an open 
door, if he really knows the subject, to express his knowl- 
edge in a way that will be a satisfaction and pleasure to 
him ; to improve his power of expression, to cultivate his 
memory, to increase his knowledge, and to make it more 
thorough and definite. Another teacher will put his ques- 
tions so as to secure none of these ends, but on the con- 
trary so as to induce a most lamentable degree of careless- 
ness and inaccuracy. 

Let me illustrate this point, taking an example for greater 
convenience from a scriptural subject. Suppose it to be a 
lesson upon Christ's temptation, as recorded in the 4th 
chapter of Matthew. The dialogue between teacher and 
scholar may be supposed to proceed somewhat in this wise : 

Teacher. Who was led up of the Spirit into the wilder- 
ness to be tempted of the devil ? 

Pupil. Jesus. 

T. Yes. Now, when Jesus had fasted forty days and 
2* 17 



18 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

forty nights, he was afterward a what ? How did he 

feel after that ? 

P. Hungry. 

T. Yes, that is right. He was afterward " a hungered." 
Now, then, the next scholar. Who then came to Jesus 
and said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these 
stones be made bread ? 

(Scholar hesitates.) 

T. Thet ? 

P. The tempter. 

T. Yes, you are right. It was the tempter. Who do 
you think is meant by the tempter? — the devil? 

P. Yes. 

T. When a man has fasted, that is, has eaten nothing, 
for forty days and forty nights, and feels very hungry, 
would the suggestion of an easy mode of getting food be 
likely to be a strong temptation to him, or would it not ? 

P. It would. 

T. Yes, you are right again. It would be a strong 
temptation to him. 

I need not pursue this dialogue further. The reader 
will see at once how there may thus be the appearance 
of quite a brisk and fluent recitation, to which however 
the pupil contributes absolutely nothing. It requires 
nothing of him in the way of preparation, and only the 
most indolent and profitless use of his faculties while re- 
citing. He could hardly answer amiss, unless he were an 
idiot, and yet he has the appearance, and he is often flat- 
tered into the belief, of having given some evidence of 
knowledge and proficiency. 



THE ART OF QUESTIONING. 19 

The opposite extreme from the method just exhibited, is 
that known as the topical method. It is the method pur- 
sued in the higher classes of schools, and among more ad- 
vanced students. In the topical method, the teacher pro- 
pounds a topic or subject, sometimes in the form of a 
question, but more commonly only by a title, a mere word 
or two, and then calls upon the pupil to give, in his own 
words, a full and connected narration or explanation of 
the subject, such as the teacher himself would give, if 
called upon to narrate or explain it. The subject already 
suggested, if profound topically, would be somewhat in 
this wise : 

The first temptation of Jesus. 

Or, more fully : Narrate the circumstances of the first 
temptation of Jesus, and show wherein his virtue was par- 
ticularly tried in that transaction. 

The teacher, having propounded the subject clearly to 
the class, then waits patiently, maintaining silence himself, 
and requiring the members of the class to be silent and 
attentive, until the pupil interrogated is quite through, not 
hurrying him, not interrupting him, even with miscalled 
helps and hints, but leaving him to the free and indepen- 
dent action of his own faculties, in giving as full, con- 
nected, and complete an account of the matter as he can. 
When the pupil is quite through, the teacher then, but 
not before, makes any corrections or additional statements 
that may seem to be needed. In such an exercise as this, 
the pupil finds the absolute necessity of full and ample 
preparation ; he has a powerful and healthy stimulus thus 
to prepare, in the intellectual satisfaction which one al- 



20 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

ways feels in the successful discharge of any difficult task ; 
and he acquires a habit of giving complete and accurate 
expression to his knowledge, by means of entire sentences, 
and without the help of " catch-words," or leading-strings 
of any kind. 

Some classes, of course, are not sufficiently advanced to 
carry out fully the method here explained. But there are 
many intermediate methods, founded on the same princi- 
ple, and suited to children in every stage of advancement. 
Only let it be understood, whatever the stage, that the 
object of the recitation is, not to show what the teacher 
can say or do, but to secure the right thing being said and 
done by the pupil. 

To recur once more to the same subject, the temptation 
of Christ. For a very juvenile class, the questioning 
might proceed on this wise: 

T. Where was Jesus led after his baptism ? 

P. He was led into the wilderness. 

T. By whom was he led there ? 

P. He was led by the Spirit. 

T. For what purpose was he led into the wilderness ? 

P. He was led into the wilderness to be tempted. 

T. By whom was he to be tempted ? 

P. He was to be tempted by the devil. 

T. What bodily want was made the means of his first 
temptation ? 

If the class is quite young, and this question seems too 
difficult, the teacher, instead of asking it, or after asking 
it and not getting a satisfactory answer, might say to his 
class, that Jesus was first tempted through the sense of 



THE AET OF QUESTIONING. 21 

hunger. He was very hungry, and the devil suggested 
to him an improper means of relieving himself from the 
inconvenience. He might then go on with some such 
questions as these: 

T. What circumstance is mentioned as showing how 
very hungry he must have been ? 

P. He had fasted forty days and forty nights. 

T. Mention any way in which you might be tempted to 
sin, if you were suffering from hunger ? 

The foregoing questions, it will be perceived, are very 
simple, being suited to scholars just advanced beyond the 
infant class. Yet no one of the questions, in its form, or 
terms, necessarily suggests the answer. No one of them 
can be answered by a mere "yes" or "no." No scholar, 
unacquainted with the subject, and with his book closed, 
can guess at the answer from the way in which the question 
is put. Not a question has been given, simple as they all 
are, which does not require some preparation, and which 
does not, to some extent, give exercise to the pupil's memory, 
his judgment, and his capacity for expression. 

If the class is more advanced, the questions may be 
varied, so as to task and exercise these faculties more 
seriously. For instance, the teacher of a class somewhat 
older might be imagined to begin the exercise thus : 

T. After the baptism of Jesus, which closes the 3d 
chapter of Matthew, we have an account of several temp- 
tations to which he was exposed. Now, open your books 
at the 4th chapter, and see if you can find out how many 
verses are occupied with the narrative of these temptations, 
and at what verse each temptation begins. 



22 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

The teacher then requires all the class to search in 
silence, and each one to get ready to answer, but lets no 
answer be given until all are prepared. When all have 
signified their readiness, some one is designated to give the 
answer. 

The books being closed, the questioning begins : 

T. Name the different places into which Jesus was 
taken to be tempted, and the verse in which each place is 
named. 

P. It is said in the 1st verse that Jesus was led up 
into the wilderness ; in the 5th verse, that he was taken up 
into the holy city, and set on a pinnacle of the temple ; 
and in the 8th verse, that he was taken up into an exceed- 
ingly high mountain. 

T. What was the condition of Jesus, when the devil 
proposed his first temptation ? 

P. He had been fasting forty days and forty nights, 
and he was very hungry. 

I need not multiply these illustrations. I have not 
made them entirely in vain, if I have succeeded in pro- 
ducing in the mind of the reader the conviction of these 
two things : first, that it is a most important and difiicult 
part of the teacher's art, to know how to ask a question ; 
and secondly, that the true measure of the teacher's ability 
is, not so much what he himself is able to say to the schol- 
ars, as the fulness, the accuracy, and the completeness of 
the answers which he gets from them. 



III. 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TEACHING AND 
TRAINING. 

THESE two processes practically run into each other a 
good deal, but they ought not to be confounded. 
Training implies more or less of practical application of 
what one has been taught. One may be taught, for in- 
stance, the exact forms of the letters used in writing, so as 
to know at once by the eye whether the letters are formed 
correctly or not. But only training and practice will make 
him a penman. Training refers more to the formation of 
habits. A child may by reasoning be taught the impor- 
tance of punctuality in coming to school ; but he is trained 
to the habit of punctuality only by actually coming to 
school in good time, day after day. 

The human machine on which the teacher acts, is in its 
essential nature different from the material agencies oper- 
ated on by other engineers. It is, as I have once and again 
said, a living power, with laws and processes of its own. 
Constant care, therefore, must be exercised, in the business 
of education, not to be misled by analogies drawn from the 
material world. The steam-engine may go over its ap- 
pointed task, day after day, the whole year round, and yet, 
at the end of the year, it will have no more tendency to go 
than before its first trip. Not so the boy. Going begets 

28 



24 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

going. By doing a thing often, he acquires a facility, an 
inclination, a tendency, a habit of doing it. If a teacher 
or a parent succeeds in getting a child to do a thing once, 
it will be easier to get him to do it a second time, and still 
easier a third time. 

A teacher who is wise, when he seeks to bring about 
any given change in a child, whether it be intellectual or 
moral, will not ordinarily attempt to produce the change 
all at once, and by main force. He will not rely upon 
extravagant promises on the one side, nor upon scolding, 
threats, and violence on the other. Solomon hits the idea 
exactly, when he speaks of " leading in the way of right- 
eousness." We must take the young by the hand and lead 
them. When we have led them over the ground once, let 
us do it a second time, and then a third time, and so keep 
on, until we shall have established with them a routine, 
which they will continue to follow of their own accord, 
when the guiding hand which first led them is withdrawn. 
This is training. 

The theory of it is true, not only in regard to things to 
be done, which is generally admitted, but also in regard to 
things to be known, which is often ignored if not denied. 
A boy, we will say, has a repugnance to the study of 
arithmetic. Perhaps he is particularly dull of comprehen- 
sion on that subject. We shall not remove that repug- 
nance by railing at him. We shall never make him ad- 
mire it by expatiating on its beauties. It will not become 
clear to his comprehension by our pouring upon it all at 
once a sudden and overpowering blaze of light in the way 
of explanation. Such a process rather confounds him. 



TEACHING AND TRAINING. 25 

Here again let us fall back upon the method of the great 
Teacher, "Line upon line, precept upon precept." We 
will ' first patiently conduct our boy through one of the 
simplest operations of arithmetic, say, a sum in addition. 
The next day we will conduct him again through the same 
process, or through another of the same sort. The steps 
will gradually become familiar to his mind, then easy, 
then clear. He learns first the practice of arithmetic, then 
the rules, then the relations of numbers, then the theory 
on which the rules and the practice are based, and finally, 
he hardly knows how, he becomes an arithmetician. He 
has been trained into a knowledge of the subject. 

You wish to teach a young child how to find a word in 
a dictionary. You give at first, perhaps, a verbal descrip- 
tion of the mystery of a dictionary. You will tell him 
that, in such a book, all the words are arranged according 
to the letters with which they begin ; that all the words 
beginning with the letter A are in the first part of the 
book ; then those beginning with the letter B, then those 
beginning with C, and so on ; you tell him that all the 
words beginning with one letter, covering some one or two 
hundred pages, are again re-arranged among themselves 
according to the second letter of each word, and then 
again still further re-arranged according to the third letter 
in each, and so on to the end. Arouse his utmost atten- 
tion, and explain the process with the greatest clearness 
that words can give, and then set him to find a word. See 
how awkward will be his first attempt, how confused his 
ideas, how little he has really understood what you have 
told him. You must repeat your directions patiently, over 



26 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

and over, " line upon line ; " you must take him by the 
hand day after day, and train him into a knowledge of 
even so apparently simple a thing as finding a word in a 
dictionary. 

While teaching and training are thus distinguishable in 
theory, in practice they are well nigh inseparable. At 
least, they never should be separated. Teaching has never 
done its perfect work, until, by training, the mind has 
learned to run in accustomed channels, until it sees what 
is true, and feels what is right, with the clearness, force, 
and promptitude, which come only from long-continued 
habit. 



IV. 

MODES OF HEARING RECITATIONS. 

THE first that I shall name is called the Concert Method. 
This is practised chiefly in schools for very young 
children, especially for those who cannot read. There are 
many advantages in this method, some of which are not 
confined to infant classes. The timid, who are frightened 
by the sound of their own voices when attempting to re- 
cite alone, are thereby encouraged to speak out ; and those 
who have had any experience with such children, know 
that this is no small, or easy, or unimportant achievement. 
Another benefit of the method is the pleasure it gives the 
children. The measured noise and motion connected with 
such concert exercises, are particularly attractive to young 
children. Moreover, one good teacher, by the use of this 
method, may greatly multiply his efficiency. He may 
teach simultaneously fifty or sixty, instead of teaching only 
five or six. But in estimating this advantage, one error 
is to be guarded against. Visitors often hear a large class 
of fifty or more go through an exercise of this kind, in 
which the scholars have been drilled to recite in concert ; 
and if such persons have never been accustomed to inves- 
tigate the fact, they often suppose that the answers given 
are the intelligent responses of all the members of the 
class. The truth is, however, in very many such cases, 

27 



28 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

that only some half dozen or so really recite the answers 
from their own independent knowledge. These serve as 
leaders ; the others, sheep-like, follow. Still, by frequent 
repetition, even in this blind way, something gradually 
sticks to the memory, although the impression is always 
apt to be vague and undefined. 

The method of reciting in concert is chiefly useful in 
reciting rules and definitions, or other matters, where the 
very words are to be committed to memory. The impres- 
sion of so large a body of sound upon the ear is very 
strong, and is a great help in the matter of mere verbal 
recollection. Children too are very sympathetic, and a 
really skilful teacher, by the concert method, can do a 
great deal in cultivating the emotional nature of a large 
class. 

Young children, too, it should be remembered, like all 
other young animals, are by nature restless and fidgety, 
and like to make a noise. It is possible, indeed, by a sys- 
tem of rigorous and harsh repression, to restrain this rest- 
lessness, and to keep these little ones for hours in such a 
state of decorous primness as not to molest weak nerves. 
But such a system of forced constraint is not natural to 
children, and is not a wise method of teaching. Let the 
youngsters make a noise ; I had almost said, the more 
noise the better, so it be duly regulated. Let them exer- 
cise, not only their lungs, but their limbs, moving in con- 
cert, rising up, sitting down, turning round, marching, 
raising their hands,, pointing to objects to which their at- 
tention is called, looking at objects which are shown to 
them. Movement and noise are the life of a child. They 



MODES OF HEARING RECITATIONS. 29 

should be regulated indeed, but not repressed. To make 
a young child sit still and keep silence for any great 
length of time, is next door to murder. I verily believe 
it sometimes is murder. The health, and even the lives 
of these little ones, are sacrificed to a false theory of teach- 
ing. There is no occasion for torturing a child in order to 
teach him. God did not so mean it. Only let your teach- 
ing be in accordance with the wants of his young nature, and 
the school-room will be to him the most attractive spot of 
all the earth. Time and again have I seen the teacher of 
a primary school obliged at recess to compel her children 
to go out of doors, so much more pleasant did they find 
the school-room than the play-ground. 

Quite the opposite extreme from the concert method, is 
that which, for convenience, may be called the individual 
method. In this method, the teacher examines one scholar 
alone upon the whole lesson, and then another, and so on, 
until the class is completed. 

The only advantage claimed for this method is, that the 
individual laggard cannot screen his deficiencies, as he can 
when reciting in concert. He cannot make believe to 
know the lesson by lazily joining in with the general cur- 
rent of voice when the answers are given. His own indi- 
vidual knowledge, or ignorance, stands out. This is clear, 
and so far it is an advantage. But ascertaining what a 
pupil knows of a lesson, is only one end, and that by no 
means the most important end of a recitation. This inter- 
view between the pupil and teacher, called a recitation, 
has many ends besides that of merely detecting how much 
of a subject the pupil knows. A far higher end is to 
3* 



30 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

make him know more, — to make perfect that knowledge 
which the most faithful preparation on the part of the 
pupil always leaves incomplete. 

The disadvantages of the individual method are ob- 
vious. It is a great waste of time. If a teacher has a 
class of twenty, and an hour to hear them in, it gives 
him but three minutes for each pupil, supposing there are 
no interruptions. But there always are interruptions. 
In public schools the class oftener numbers forty than 
twenty, and the time for recitation is oftener half an hour 
than an hour. The teacher who pursues the individual 
method to its extreme, will rarely find himself in posses- 
sion of more than one minute to each scholar. In so brief 
a time, very little can be ascertained as to what the scholar 
knows of the lesson, and still less can anything be done to 
increase that knowledge. Moreover, while the teacher is 
bestowing his small modicum of time upon one scholar, 
all the other members of the class are idle, or worse. 

Teaching, of all kinds of labor, is that in which labor- 
saving and time-saving methods are of the greatest moment. 
The teacher who is wise, will aim so to conduct a recitation 
that, first, his whole time shall be given to every scholar ; 
and secondly, each scholar's mind shall be exercised with 
every part of the lesson, and just as much when others are 
reciting, as when it is his own time to recite. A teacher 
who can do this is teaching every scholar, all the time, 
just as much as if he had no scholar but that one. 

Even this does not state the whole case. A scholar in 
such a class learns more in a given time, than he would 
if he were alone and the teacher's entire time were given 



MODES OF HEARING RECITATIONS. 31 

exclusively to him. The human mind is wonderfully 
quickened by sympathy. In a crowd each catches, in 
some mysterious manner, an impulse from his fellows. 
The influence of associated numbers, all engaged upon the 
same thought, is universally to rouse the mind to a higher 
exercise of its powers. A mind that is dull, lethargic, and 
heavy in its movements when moving solitarily, often 
effects, when under a social and sympathetic impulse, 
achievements that are a wonder to itself 

The teacher, then, who knows how thus to make a unit 
of twenty or thirty pupils, really multiplies himself twenty 
or thirty-fold, besides giving to the whole class an increased 
momentum such as always belongs to an aggregated mass. 
I have seen a teacher instruct a class of forty in such a 
way, as, in the first place, to secure the subordinate end 
of ascertaining and registering with a sujficient degree of 
exactness how much each scholar knows of the lesson by 
his own preparation, and secondly, to secure, during the 
whole hour, the active exercise and cooperation of each 
individual mind, under the powerful stimulus of the social 
instinct, and of a keenly awakened attention. Such a 
teacher accomplishes more in one hour than the slave of 
the individual method can accomplish in forty hours. A 
scholar in such a class learns more in one hour than he 
would learn in forty hours, in a class of equal numbers 
taught on the other plan. Such teaching is labor-saving 
and time-saving, in their highest perfection, emj)loyed uj^ou 
the noblest of ends. 



V. 



ON OBSERVING A PROPER ORDER IN THE DEVEL- 
OPMENT OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES. 

"T71DUCATI0N may be defined to be the process of devel- 
-■--' oping in due order and proportion all the good and de- 
sirable parts of human nature. On this point all educators 
are substantially agreed. Another truth, to which there is 
a general theoretical assent, is, that, in the order in which 
we develop the faculties, we should follow the leadings of 
nature, cultivating in childhood those faculties which seem 
most naturally to flourish in childish years, and reserving 
for maturer years the cultivation of those faculties which 
in the order of nature do not show much vigor until near 
the age of manhood, and which require for their full de- 
velopment a general ripening of all the other powers. 
The development of a human being is in some respects 
like that of a plant. There is one stage of growth suit- 
able for the appearance and maturity of the leaf, another 
for the flower, a third for the fruit, and still a fourth for 
the perfected and ripened seed. 

The analogy has of course many limitations. In the 
human plant, for instance, one class of faculties, after ma- 
turing, does not disappear in order to make place for an- 
other class, as the flower disappears before there can be 

32 



ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT. 33 

fruit. Nor, again, is any class of faculties wanting alto- 
gether until the season for their development and maturity. 
The faculties all exist together — leaf, flower, fruit, and 
seed — at the same time, but each has its own best time 
for ripening. 

While these principles have received the general assent 
of educators, there has been a wide divergence among 
them as to some of the practical applications. Which 
faculties do most naturally ripen early in life, and which 
late in life ? 

According to my own observation, the latest of the 
human powers in maturing, as it is the most consummate, 
is the Judgment. Next in the order of maturity, and next 
also in majesty and excellence, is the Reasoning power. 
Reason is minister to the judgment, furnishing to the latter 
materials for its action, as all the other powers, memory, 
fancy, imagination, and so forth, are ministers to reason, 
and supply it with its materials. The reasoning power 
lacks true vigor and muscle, the judgment is little to be 
relied on, until we approach manhood. Nature withholds 
from these faculties an earlier development, for the very 
reason, apparently, that they can ordinarily have but 
scanty materials for action until after the efflorescence of 
the other faculties. The mind must first be well filled 
with knowledge, which the other faculties have gathered 
and stored, before reason and judgment can have full scope 
for action. 

Going to the other end of the scale, I have as little 
doubt that the earliest of all the faculties to bud and blos- 
som, is the Memory. Children not only commit to mem- 



34 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

ory with ease, but they take actual pleasure in it. Tasks, 
under which the grown-up man recoils and reels, the child 
will assume with light heart, and execute without fatigue. 
Committing to memory, which is repulsive drudgery to 
the man, is the easiest of all tasks to the child. More 
than this. The things fixed in the memory of childhood 
are seldom forgotten. Things learned later in life, not 
only are learned with greater difficulty, but more rapidly 
disappear. I recall instantly and without efibrt, texts of 
Scripture, hymns, catechisms, rules of grammar and arith- 
metic, and scraps of poetry and of classic authors, with 
which I became familiar when a boy. But it is a labor 
of Hercules for me to repeat by memory anything acquired 
since attaining the age of manhood. The Creator seems 
to have arranged an order in the natural development of 
the faculties for this very purpose, that in childhood and 
youth we may be chiefly occupied with the accumulation 
of materials in our intellectual storehouse. Now to re- 
verse this process, to occupy the immature mind of child- 
hood chiefly with the cultivation of faculties which are of 
later growth, and actually to put shackles and restraints 
upon the memory, nicknaming and ridiculing all memori- 
ter exercises as parrot performances, is to ignore one of 
thQ primary facts of human nature. * It is to be wiser than 
God. 

Another faculty that shoots up into full growth in the 
very morning and spring-time of life, is Faith. I speak 
here, of course, not of religious belief, but of that faculty 
of the human mind which leads a child to believe instinc- 
tively whatever is told him. That we all do thus believC; 



ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT. 35 

until by slow and painful experience we learn to do other- 
wise, needs no demonstration. Everybody's experience 
attests the fact. It is equally plain that the existence and 
maturity of this faculty in early childhood is a most wise 
and beneficent provision of nature. How slow and tedious 
would be the first steps in knowledge, were the child born, 
as some teachers seem trying to make him, a sceptic, that 
is, with a mind which refuses to receive anything as true, 
except what it has first proved by experience and reason ! 
On the contrary, how much is the acquisition of knowl- 
edge expedited, during these years of helplessness and 
dependency, by this spontaneous, instinctive faith of child- 
hood. The same infinite wisdom and love, which in the 
order of nature provide for the helpless infant a father 
and mother to care for it, provide also in the constitution 
of the infant's mind that instinctive principle or power of 
faith, which alone makes the father's and mother's love 
efiicacious towards its intellectual growth and develop- 
ment. Of what use were parents or teachers, in instruct- 
ing a child which required proof for every statement that 
father, mother, or teacher gives? How cruel to force the 
confiding young heart into premature scepticism, by com- 
pelling him to hunt up reasons for everything, when he has 
reasons, to him all-sufficient, in the fact that father, mother, 
or teacher told him so ? 

It may seem trifling to dwell so long upon these elemen- 
tary points. Yet there are wide-spread plans of education 
which violate every principle here laid down. Educa- 
tors and systems of education, enjoying the highest pop- 
ularity, seem to have adopted the theory, at least they 



36 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

tacitly act upon the theory, that the first faculty of the 
mind to be developed is the Keasoning power. Indeed, 
they are not far from asserting that the whole business of 
education consists in the cultivation of this power, and 
they bend accordingly their main energies upon training 
young children to go through certain processes of reason- 
ing, so called. They require a child to prove everything 
before receiving it as true; to reason out a rule for himself 
for every process in arithmetic or grammar; to demon- 
strate the multiplication-table before daring to use it, or 
to commit it to memory, if indeed they do not forbid 
entirely its being committed to memory as too parrot-like 
and mechanical. To commit blindly to memory precious 
forms of truth, which the wise and good have hived for 
the use of the race, is poohed at as old-fogyish. To receive 
as true anything which the child cannot fathom, and which 
he has not discovered or demonstrated for himself, is de- 
nounced as slavish. All authority in teaching, growing 
out of the age and the reputed wisdom of the teacher, all 
faith and reverence in the learner, growing out of a sense 
of his ignorance and dependence, are discarded, and the 
frightened stripling is continually rapped on the knuckles, 
if lie docs not at every step show the truth of his allega- 
tions by what is called a course of reasoning. Children 
reason, of course. They should be encouraged and taught 
to reason. No teacher, who is wise, will neglect this part 
of a child's intellectual powers. But he will not consider 
this the season for its main, normal development. He will 
hold this subject for the present subordinate to many 
others. Moreover, the methods of reasoning, which he 



ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT. 37 

does adopt, will be of a peculiar kind, suited to the nature 
of childhood, the results being mainly intuitional, rather 
than the fruits of formal logic. To oblige a young child 
to go through a formal syllogistic statement in every step 
in elementary arithmetic, for instance, is simply absurd. 
It makes nothing plain to a child's mind which was not 
plain before. On the contrary, it often makes a muddle 
of what had been perfectly clear. What was in the clear 
sunlight of intuition, is now in a haze, through the inter- 
vening medium of logical terms and forms, through which 
he is obliged to look at it. 

A primary teacher asks her class this question : " If I 
can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, how many marbles can 
I buy with 5 pennies?" A bright boy who should 
promptly answer " 30 " would be sharply rebuked. Little 
eight-year old Solon on the next bench has been better 
trained than that. With stately and solemn enunciation 
he delivers himself of a performance somewhat of this 
sort. " If I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, how many 
marbles can I buy with 5 pennies ? Answer — I can buy 

5 times as many marbles with 5 pennies as I can buy with 
1 penny. If, therefore, I can buy 6 marbles with 1 penny, 
I can buy 5 times as many marbles with 5 pennies ; and 5 
times 6 marbles are 30 marbles. Therefore, if I can buy 

6 marbles with one penny, I can buy 30 marbles Avith 5 
pennies." 

And this is termed reasoning! And to train children, 
by forced and artificial processes, to go through such a 
rigmarole of words, is recommended as a means of culti- 
vating their reasoning power and of improving their power 
4 



38 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

of expression ! It is not pretended that children by such 
a process become more expert in reckoning. On the con- 
trary, their movements as ready reckoners are retarded by 
it. Instead of learning to jump at once to the conclusion, 
lightning-like, by a sort of intuitional process, which is of 
the very essence of an expert accountant, they learn labo- 
riously to stay their march by a cumbersome and confusing 
circumlocution of words. And the expenditure of time 
and toil needed to acquire these formulas of expression, 
which nine times out of ten are to those young minds the 
mere dicta magistri, is justified on the ground that the 
children, if not learning arithmetic, are learning to reason. 
Let me not be misunderstood. I do not advocate the 
disuse of explanations. Let teachers explain, let children 
give explanations. Let the rationale of the various pro- 
cesses through which the child goes, receive a certain 
amount of attention. But the extreme into which some are 
now going, in primary education, is that of giving too much 
time to explanation and to theory, and too little to prac- 
tice. We reverse, too, the order of nature in this matter. 
What it now takes weeks and months to make clear to the 
immature understanding, is apprehended at a later day 
with ease and delight at the very first statement. There 
is a clear and consistent philosophy underlying this whole 
matter. It is simply this. In the healthy and natural 
order of development in educating a young mind, theory 
should follow practice, not precede it. Children learn the 
practice of arithmetic very young. They take to it natu- 
rally, and learn it easily, and become very rapidly expert 
practical accountants. But the science of arithmetic is 



OKDER OF DEVELOPMENT. 39 

quite another matter, and should not be forced upon them 
until a much later stage in their advancement. 

To have a really correct apprehension of the principle 
of decimal notation, for instance, to understand that it is 
purely arbitrary, and that we might in the same way take 
any other number than ten as the base of a numerical 
scale,— that we might increase for instance by fives, or 
eights, or nines, or twelves, just as well as by tens — all 
this requires considerable maturity of intellect, and some 
subtlety of reasoning. Indeed I doubt whether many of 
the pretentious sciolists, who insist so much on young chil- 
dren giving the rationale of everything, have themselves 
ever yet made an ultimate analysis of the first step in 
arithmetical notation. Many of them would open their 
eyes were you to tell them, for instance, that the number 
of fingers on your two hands may be just as correctly ex- 
pressed by the figures 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, as by the fig- 
ures 10, — a truism perfectly familiar to every one ac- 
quainted with the generalizations of higher arithmetic. 
Yet it is up-hill work to make the matter quite clear to a 
beginner. We may wisely therefore give our children at 
first an arbitrary rule for notation. We give them an 
equally arbitrary rule for addition. They accept these 
rules and work upon them, and learn thereby the practical 
operations of arithmetic. The theory will follow in due 
time. When perfectly familiar with the practice and the 
forms of arithmetic, and sufficiently mature in intellect, 
they awaken gradually and surely, and almost without an 
effort, to the beautiful logic which underlies the science. 
How do we learn language in childhood? Is it not 



40 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

solely on authority and by example ? A child who lives 
in a family where no language is used but that w^hich is 
logically and grammatically correct, will learn to speak 
with logical and grammatical correctness long before it is 
able to give any account of the processes of its own mind 
in the matter, or indeed to understand those processes 
when explained by others. In other words, practice in 
language precedes theory. It should do so in other things. 
The parent who should take measures to prevent a child 
from speaking its mother tongue, except just so far and so 
fast as it could understand and explain the subtle logic 
which underlies all language, would be quite as wise as 
the teacher who refuses to let a child become expert in 
practical reckoning, until it can understand and explain 
at every step the rationale of the process, — who will not 
suffer a child to learn the multiplication table until it has 
mastered the metaphysics of the science of numbers, and 
can explain with the formalities of syllogism exactly how 
and why seven times nine make sixty-three. 

These illustrations have carried me a little, perhaps, 
from my subject. But they seemed necessary to show 
that I am not beating the air. I have feared lest, in our 
very best schools, in the rebound from the exploded errors 
of the old system, we have unconsciously run into an error 
in the opposite extreme. 

My positions on the particular point now under consid- 
eration may be summed up briefly, as follows : 

1. In developing the faculties, we should follow the 
order of nature. 

2. The faculties of memory and faith should be largely 
exercised and cultivated in childlMMul. 



ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT. 41 

3. While the judgment and the reasoning faculty should 
be exercised during every stage of the intellectual develop- 
ment, the appropriate season for their main development 
and culture is near the close, rather than near the begin- 
ning, of an educational course. 

4. The methods of reasoning used with children should 
be of a simple kind, dealing largely in direct intuitions, 
rather than formal and syllogistic. 

5. It is a mistake to spend a large amount of time and 
effort in requiring young children formally to explain the 
rationale of their intellectual processes, and especially in 
requiring them to give such explanations before they have 
become by practice thoroughly familiar with the processes 
themselves. 

4* 



VI. 



TEACHING CHILDREN WHAT THEY DO NOT UNDER- 
STAND. 

IT is not uncommon to hear persons declaim against 
teaching children what they do not understand. If 
by this is meant that children should not learn a set of 
words as parrots do, merely by the ear, and without at- 
taching any idea to what they utter, no one will dissent 
from the propriety of the rule. But if the meaning is 
that they should learn nothing except what they fully com- 
prehend, the rule certainly needs to be hedged in by some 
grave precautions. 

There are indeed few things which any one, the oldest 
or the wisest, fully comprehends. Who knows what mat- 
ter is ? Certainly not the most eminent of philosophers. 
They do not pretend to know. We pick up a pebble. 
Who can tell what it is, absolutely? We say that it is 
something which has certain qualities. But even these 
we know mainly by negations. The pebble is hard, that 
is, it does not yield to pressure. It is opaque, that is, it 
does not transmit light. It is heavy, that is, it does not 
remain still, but goes towards the centre of the earth 
unless intercepted by some interposing body. 

Who knows the meaning, absolutely, of a single article 

42 



POWER OF COMPREHENSION. 43 

of the Creed ? Certainly not the most eminent of divines. 
We know certain things about the great mysteries of the 
Godhead, and even these things we know, not directly, but 
by certain faint, distant analogies, and we express our 
knowledge in terms chosen mainly from Scripture and 
arranged with care by wise and learned men. These ven- 
erable formularies, containing the most exact verbal ex- 
pression which the Church has been able to frame, of what 
the Scriptures teach about God and his ways, we commit 
to memory, and we repeat them with comfort and edifica- 
tion. But we do not pretend to penetrate the very essence 
of their meaning. Who by searching can find out God ? 
One must be God himself to understand him. 

We read that Christ was tempted of the devil in the 
wilderness. There are many things in this transaction 
which we may be said, in a certain sense, to know. But 
a man will not proceed far in analyzing this knowledge be- 
fore he will discover that there are mysteries underlying 
the whole, which he cannot penetrate. He knows some of 
the surface relations. But the things themselves, in their 
essence, are unknown. Was Christ tempted, as the devil 
tempts us, by suggesting thoughts in the mind ? Was the 
devil present in a bodily shape ? Did he utter an audible 
voice, by undulating the air, as we do ? Has he direct 
relations to matter, as we have ? How could his offer of 
worldly power and riches be any real temptation to the 
Saviour, when Jesus knew that Satan had no power to make 
his oflfer good ? 

There are indeed few things, in revelation or out of rev- 
elation, in mind or in matter, which we really and fully 



44 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

comprehend. If, therefore, we are to teach children noth- 
ing but what they understand, we must either teach them 
nothing at all, or our rule must be materially qualified. 
No one knows absolutely but God. Among created beings, 
there are almost infinite gradations of intelligence, al- 
though the highest created intelligence begins its range 
infinitely below that of the Divine mind. A given for- 
mula of words, therefore, may express very difierent de- 
grees of truth according to the degree of intelligence of 
the party using it. 

A catechism or a creed may convey twenty different 
degrees of meaning to twenty successive persons, varying 
in age, character, and culture. Yet the very youngest and 
feeblest shall understand something of its meaning, while 
the wisest and oldest shall not have exhausted it. The 
young and feeble intellect, receiving a formula of truth 
with suitable explanations of its terms, takes in at once a 
portion of its meaning and gradually grows into a fuller 
comprehension of what it has received. A statement of 
doctrine received by a child at the age of five, conveys to 
him a few feeble rays of light. The same statement at 
the age of ten, means to him far more than it did before, 
while at twenty it is all luminous with knowledge. 

The mind itself grows and expands, and with every ad- 
dition to its own vigor and stature, does it find new truths 
in those expressive and pregnant formulas of doctrine with 
which it has from childhood been familiar. It is like look- 
ing at a material object, first with the naked eye, and then 
with glasses of continually increased magnifying power. 
The more we increase the power, the more we see in the 



POWER OF COMPREHENSION. 45 

same bit of matter. Yet no glass will ever reveal to us 
the very interior essence of even the smallest particle of 
dust. God only knows fully either any single thing or 
the sum of things. Because, however, we cannot see into 
the essence of a pebble or a grain of sand, shall we shut 
our eyes to it altogether ? Shall we not look at it, first as 
an infant does, then as a child, then as a youth, then as a 
man, then as a philosopher ? We can never see it as God 
does. But we shall see it with ever-growing powers of 
vision, until that which was to us at first only a rude mass 
becomes an exhaustless organized microcosm of wonders. 

I do not advocate the overloading of children with ver- 
bal statements of abstruse doctrines, whether of religion 
or of science. Much less would I turn them into parrots, 
to repeat phrases to which they attach no meaning at all. 
But when it is demanded, on the other hand, that they 
shall learn nothing but what they understand, I demur. 
I ask for explanation of the rule. I insist that, every 
statement of truth which they learn, even the most ele- 
mentary, contains depths which neither they nor their 
teachers can fathom. I insist that, both in science and 
religion, there are certain great, admitted elementary 
truths, reduced to forms of sound words with which the 
whole world is familiar ; and that while these formularies 
contain many things which a child cannot understand, 
they yet contain many things of which even the youngest 
child has a fair comprehension. I insist that a carefully 
prepared religious creed or catechism, even though it con- 
tains many things beyond a child's present comprehension, 
is a fit subject for study. Memory in childhood is quick 



46 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

and tenacious. The treasures first laid away in that great 
storehouse are the last to be removed. They may be over- 
laid by subsequent accumulations, but they are still ready 
for use. Forms of sound words are certainly among the 
things which parents and teachers should store away in 
the young minds of which they have charge. If the child 
does not understand all that he thus places in his memory, 
he understands portions of it just as he sees certain quali- 
ties of the pebble which he holds in his hand, and he will 
see and understand more, as his mind expands and his 
powers of spiritual vision increase. 



VII. 

CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH. 

11 /["ANY educators now-a-days are accustomed to speak 
-•^'-^ slightly of the old-fashioned plan of committing to 
memory verses of Scripture, hymns, catechisms, creeds, 
and other formulas of doctrine and sentiment in religion 
and science. Many speak disparagingly even of memory 
itself, and profess to think it a faculty of minor impor- 
tance, regarding its cultivation as savoring of old-fogyism, 
and sneering at all memoriter exercises among children as 
the chattering of parrots. It is never without amazement 
that I hear such utterances. Memory is God's gift, by 
which alone we are able to retain our intellectual acqui- 
sitions. Without it, study is useless, and education simply 
an impossibility. Without it, there could be no such thing 
as growth in knowledge. We could know no more to-day 
than we knew yesterday, or last week, or last year. The 
man would be no wiser than the boy. Without this faculty, 
the mind would be, not as now like the prepared plate which 
the photographer puts in his camera, and which retains 
indelibly on its surface the impressions of whatever objects 
pass before it ; but would rather be like the window pane, 
before which passes from day to day the gorgeous pano- 
rama of nature, transmitting with equal and crystalline 

47 



48 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

clearness the golden glory of the sun, the pale rays of the 
moon and stars, the soft green of meadow and woodland, 
images of beauty and loveliness, of light and shade, from 
every object on the earth and in the heavens ; but retain- 
ing on its own surface not a line or a tint of the millions 
of rays that have passed through its substance, and re- 
maining to the end the same bit of transparent glass, un- 
changed, unprofited by the countless changes it has re- 
ceived and transmitted. 

Memory alone gives value to the products of every 
other faculty, stamping them with the seal of possessor- 
ship, and making them truly ours. In vain reason forges 
its bolts, in vain imagination paints its scenes, in vain the 
senses give us a knowledge of the shapes and forms of ex- 
ternal nature, in vain ideas of any sort or from any source 
come into our minds, unless we have the power to retain 
and fix them there, and make them a part of our accumu- 
lated intellectual wealth. To do this is the office of mem- 
ory, and whatever increases the activity and power of the 
memory, gives at once value and growth to eyery other 
power. 

Memory has been well called the store-house of our 
ideas. The illustration is true not only in its main feature, 
but in many of the minor details. The value of what a 
man puts away in a store-house depends much upon the 
order and system with which the objects are stored. The 
wise and thrifty merchant has bins and boxes and com- 
partments and pigeon-holes, all arranged with due order 
and symmetry, and every item of goods, as it is added to 
his stock, is put away at once in its appropriate place, 



CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH. 49 

where he can lay his hands upon it whenever it is wanted. 
There should be a like method and system in our mental 
accumulations. The remembrance of facts and truths is 
of little value to us unless we can remember them in their 
connections, and can so remember them as to be able to 
lay our hands upon any particular thought or fact just 
when and where it is wanted. Many persons read and 
study voraciously, filling their minds most industriously 
with knowledge, but such a confusion of ideas prevails 
throughout their intellectual store-house, that their very 
wealth is only an embarrassment to them. The very first 
rule to be observed, therefore, in cultivating the memory, 
is to reduce our knowledge to some system. Those who 
are charged with the training of the young should seek 
not only to store their minds with ideas, but to present these 
ideas to them in well ordered shapes and forms, and in 
due logical order and coherence. Hence the peculiar 
value of requiring children at the proper age to commit 
to memory the grand formulas of Christian doctrine, on 
which, in every church, its wisest and ablest men have ex- 
pended their strength in placing great truths in connected 
and logical order and dependence. The creeds and cate- 
chisms of the Christian church are among the best prod- 
ucts of the human intellect as mere specimens of verbal 
statement, and are valuable, if for nothing else, as a means 
for exercising the memory. A child who has thoroughly 
mastered a good catechism has his intellectual store-house 
already reduced to some order and system. His mind is 
not the chaos that we so often find in those children who 
are gathered into our mission schools. 



50 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

The objects that are put away for safe-keeping differ in 
one respect from those things which are stored away in tho 
memory. The material object is the same, whether we 
visit and inspect it from day to day or not. The banker's 
dollars are not increased in fineness or value by his hand- 
ling them over carefully every day. Not so with intellec- 
tual coin. The more frequently we re-examine our knowl- 
edge and pass it under review, the more does it become 
fixed in its character, the more full and exact in its pro- 
portions. Handling it does not wear it out. Even giving 
it away does not diminish it. In short, so far as the cul- 
tivation of the memory is concerned, the next best thing 
we can do, after reducing our knowledge to due order, is 
to give it a frequent and thorough re-examination. Con- 
stant, almost endless repetition is the inexorable price of 
sound mental accumulation. 

A distinction is to be made between memory as a power 
of the mind and the remembrance of particular facts. 
One or two examples will illustrate this difierence. The 
late Dr. Addison Alexander, of the Theological Seminary 
at Princeton, had memory as an intellectual power to a 
degree almost marvellous. The following instance may be 
cited. On one occasion, a large class of forty or fifty were 
to be matriculated in the Seminary in the presence of the 
Faculty. The ceremony of matriculation was very simple. 
The professors and the new students being all assembled, 
in a large hall, each student in turn presented himself be- 
fore the professors, had his credentials examined by them, 
and if the same proved satisfactory, entered his name in 
full and his residence, in the register. When the matricu- 



CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH. 51 

lation was complete and the students had retired, there 
was some bantering among the professors as to which of 
them should take the register home and prepare from it an 
alphabetical roll, — a work always considered rather te- 
dious and irksome. After a little hesitation. Dr. Alexander 
said, "There is no need of taking the register home; I 
will make the roll for you ; " and, taking a sheet of paper, 
at once, from memory, without referring to the register, 
and merely from having heard the names as they were re- 
corded, he proceeded to make out the roll, giving the names 
in full and giving them in their alphabetical order. This 
was a prodigious feat of pure memory ; for in order to 
make the alphabetical arrangement in his mind, before 
committing it to paper, he must have had the entire mass 
of names present in his mind by a single act of the will. 
Some of the wonderful games of chess performed by Paul 
Morphy are dependent in part upon a similar power of 
memory, by which the player is enabled to keep present 
in his mind, without seeing the board, a long series of 
complicated evolutions, past as well as prospective and 
possible. The same is true of every great military 
strategist. 

In all these cases, there is an act of pure memory, a 
direct and positive power of summoning into the mind its 
past experiences, such as can only take place where, either 
by natural gift or by special training, the memory as a 
faculty of the mind is in a high state of vigor. But there 
are other cases, in which a man is enabled to recall a great 
number of particular facts by a species of artifice or trick, 
which does not imply any special mental power, and the 



62 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

study of which does not tend, in any marked degree, to 
develop such power. More than thirty years ago, the late 
Professor Dod, of Princeton College, in lecturing to a class 
on the subject of light, was explaining the solar spectrum, 
and after exhibiting the solar ray, divided into its seven 
primary colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, 
and red, said, " If you will form a mnemonic word of the 
first letters of each of these words, you will be able, with- 
out further effort, to remember the order of the prismatic 
colors the rest of your lives," and he accordingly wrote 
upon the board and pronounced the uncouth and almost 
unpronounceable word, Vibgyor, which probably not one 
of us has ever forgotten. An ingenious Frenchman some 
years ago traversed the country and collected large audi- 
ences by his exhibitions of skill in this species of artifice, 
and by undertaking to initiate his hearers in the method 
of remembering prodigious numbers of historical facts by 
means of such artificial contrivances. Mnemotechny, the 
name which he gave to his invention, is merely a trick of 
the memory. It is a means of remembering a particular 
set of facts or things by the aid of contrivances purely 
artificial and arbitrary. Its possession does not imply, and 
its cultivation does not produce, real mnemonic power. 
It undoubtedly has its uses. But it is rather wealth gained 
by a lottery ticket than a wealth-producing power acquired 
by wise habits of business. 

In teaching the young, it is well not to neglect either of 
these principles. We should give our children from time 
to time ingenious and interesting contrivances for remem- 
bering important facts. These contrivances, if judicious 



CULTIVATING THE MEMORY IN YOUTH. 53 

in plan and execution, will be great helps to them. We 
may in this way bridge over the difficulty of remembering 
many of the important facts and dates in history. 

I would not discourage these artificial methods. Though 
they are mere tricks, they are valuable. But they have 
by no means the same value as those methods of teaching 
which cultivate and produce true mnemonic power. This 
power, like every other mental power, is given in unequal 
measure to different individuals. Like every other mental 
power, also, it grows mainly by exercise. No power of 
the mind is more capable of development. I have men- 
tioned some things which tend to the growth of this power, 
such as presenting knowledge to children in logical and 
orderly arrangement, and frequent re-examination of 
knowledge already obtained. Perhaps there is no quick- 
ener and invigorator of the memory equal to that of re- 
citing to a judicious teacher before a large class of fellow- 
students. By a proper and skilful use of the art of ques- 
tioning, under the excitement of answering before a large 
class, the mnemonic power is subjected to a healthy and 
invigorating test, and all such exercises promote powerfully 
the mental growth. A child may absorb knowledge by 
mere solitary reading and study, just as a sponge absorbs 
water, but the knowledge so acquired readily evaporates, 
or is squeezed out. Something is needed to fix in the mind 
the knowledge that has been lodged there, and no process 
is more effectual to this end than that of class recitation. 
It is by telling other people what we have learned, that 
we learn it more effectually, and make it more completely 
our own. A good teacher, by good methods of recitation, 



54 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

can do more than all other persons and all other things 
to secure a sound and healthy growth of memory in the 
young. 

Another thing highly necessary in cultivating a really 
good memory, is attaining the utmost possible clearness in 
our ideas. If the knowledge, when it first comes into the 
mind, is clearly and sharply defined, so that we really 
know a thing, instead of having vague and confused no- 
tions about it, we shall be the more likely to remember it 
permanently. Nothing is more conducive towards giving 
these sharp and definite impressions than the use of visible 
illustrations. Actual exhibition before a class of the ob- 
jects talked about, actual experiments of the operations 
described, and the constant use of the chalk and the black- 
board, presenting even abstract truths in concrete and vis- 
ible symbols, as is done in algebra, chemistry, and logic, 
are among the means by which, chiefly, knowledge be- 
comes well defined to the mind. Such is the constitution 
of the mind, that we have a clearer apprehension of what 
we see than of what comes to us through any other sense, 
and the knowledge which comes to us by means of the 
sight, is, of all kinds of knowledge, the most lasting and 
the most easily recalled. Hence, in teaching, it is hardly 
possible to exaggerate the importance of visible illustration. 

Another condition extremely favorable to the growth 
of memory, is the existence of a considerable degree of 
mental excitement at the time that knowledge enters the 
mind. Metals weld easily only at a white heat. If we 
would obtain a vigorous grasp of knowledge, and incorpo- 
rate it thoroughly into our other mental products, so that 



CULTIVATING THE MEMOKY IN YOUTH. 55 

it shall become really ours, there should be the glow of 
mental heat at the time of our acquiring such knowledge. 
Ideas that come into the mind when we are in an apathetic 
state, make no permanent lodgment. Hence the impor- 
tance of exciting a lively interest in that which is the sub- 
ject of study. If the teacher has failed to excite this 
interest, and finds in his class no animation, no sympathy, 
no eagerness of attention, he may be sure that he is not 
accomplishing much. The child must, if possible, acquire 
a fondness for that which is to be remembered. Love, in 
fact, is the parent of memory. 



VIII. 

KNOWLEDGE BEFORE MEMORY. 

I HAVE had frequent occasion to urge upon teachers 
the importance of cultivating the memory of their 
pupils. The old-fashioned plan of requiring the young to 
commit to memory precious truths, in those very words in 
which wise and far-thinking men have handed them down to 
us, has too much gone out of use. I have felt called upon, 
therefore, from time to time, to recall to the minds of 
teachers the unspeakable importance of early exercising 
the memory of children, and of storing their memories 
with wise sayings and rules. I would not take back any- 
thing I have said on this subject, but rather repeat and 
reiterate it. At the same time, I am aware that there is 
an extreme in this direction, and I therefore put in a word 
of caution. 

The danger to which I refer is that of requiring children 
to commit mere words, to which they attach no meaning, 
or without their having any real knowledge of the things 
expressed by the words. Of course there is much in the 
formulas and rules of science that the immature minds of 
children cannot entirely comprehend, and I am far from 
saying that a child should commit nothing except what it 
can comprehend. But whatever in a rule or a doctrine 

66 



KNOWLEDGE BEFORE MEMORY. 57 

they can understand, should be diligently explained to 
them, and the ingenuity of teachers should be exercised in 
awakening the minds of their scholars to the apprehension 
of real knowledge as a preliminary to the act of commit- 
ting it to memory. 

An example or two will illustrate my meaning. Chil- 
dren at school are required to commit to memory the 
tables of weights and measures. The exercise is one of 
acknowledged and indispensable importance. But it is 
possible for a child to repeat one of these tables with entire 
glibness and accuracy, pretty much as he would whistle 
Yankee Doodle, without any apprehension of the actual 
things which the terms of the table represent. He may 
learn to say " sixty seconds make a minute, sixty minutes 
make a degree, three hundred and sixty degrees make a 
circle," with no more idea of the things expressed by this 
formula of words, than the parrot who has been taught to 
say, "You are a big fool." If the teacher will show the 
child an actual circle, with the degrees, minutes, and sec- 
onds marked, and will let him count them for himself, so 
that he has a real knowledge of the things, he will then 
not only commit this formula of words to memory more 
easily, but the knowledge itself will promote his mental 
growth. He will be feeding on real knowledge, not on its 
husks. So in learning about inches, feet, yards, rods, and 
miles, let the teacher, -with foot-rule and yard-stick, show 
what these measures really are, let him by some familiar 
instance give the child an idea of what a mile is, and then 
let the memory be invoked to store up the knowledge 
gained. So with ounces, pounds, and hundred-weights. 



5S IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

So with gills, quarts, and gallons. The common weights 
and measures are as necessary in the school-room as are 
spelling-books and arithmetics. The actual weights and 
measures, so far as possible, should be exhibited, should 
be seen and handled, and the child's mind made to 
grasp the very things which the terms express, that is, he 
should first get real knowledge, and then he should store 
his memory with it in exact words and forms of ex- 
pression. 

This is the true mental order. Knowledge first, then 
memory. Get knowledge, then keep it. Any other plan 
is like attempting to become rich by inflating your bags 
with wind, instead of filling them with gold, or attempting 
to grow fat by bolting food in a form which you cannot 
digest. 

Some teachers, in their fear of cramming children with 
words, spend their whole time and energy in awakening 
thought, and none in fixing upon the memory the thoughts 
which have been awakened. They are so much afraid of 
making children parrots, that they discard rules entirely 
in teaching, or require pupils to frame rules for them- 
selves. This is to go into the opposite extreme. The 
rules and formulas of science require the greatest care and 
consideration, and a large and varied knowledge. Few 
even of men of learning and of those specially skilled in 
the meaning of words and the use of language, are quali- 
fied to frame scientific rules and propositions. To suppose 
that young children, just beginning to feel their way into 
any department of science, are competent to such a task, 
is simply absurd. Yet this is by no means uncommon. 



KNOWLEDGE BEFORE MEMORY. 59 

A teacher will conduct a boy intelligently and skilfully 
through the process of doing a sum in arithmetic, or 
analyzing a sentence in grammar, and then say to him, 
" Now, form a rule for yourself, stating how such things 
should be done." The first step here is right. Take your 
pupil by the hand, and conduct him through the process 
or thing to be done. This is necessary to enable him to 
understand the rule. But when he thus gets the idea, 
then give him the rule or principle, as it is laid down in 
the book, in exact and well considered words, and let him 
commit those words thoroughly to memory, without the 
change or the omission of a word or a letter. 

What is thus true as to the method of teaching the 
common branches of knowledge, is equally true in the 
study of religious knowledge. I would not set a child 
to framing a creed or a catechism, nor, on the other hand, 
would I require him to commit such formulas to memory, 
without making some attempt to awaken in his mind pre- 
viously an apprehension of the ideas which the creed or 
formula contains. I do not say that a child's mind is 
competent to grasp all the truths embraced in these sym- 
bols. But there is no portion of any religious creed or 
catechism that T have ever seen, some of the terms of 
which are not capable of being apprehended by children. 
A wise teacher, in undertaking to indoctrinate a child in 
such a formula, will begin by showing him as far as possi- 
ble what the words mean, by exciting in him ideas on the 
subject, by filling his mind with actual knowledge of the 
truths contained in the formula. Then, when the words 
of the formula have become to the child's mind instinct 



60 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

with meaning and life, the teacher will pause to stamp 
them in upon the memory. That is the way to study a 
catechism. First, give the child, so far as possible, the 
meaning, then grind the words into him. Do not set him 
to making a catechism ; do not let him stop at understanding 
the meaning, without committing the words. 

Two phrases will cover the whole ground. Knowledge 
before memory. Memory as well as knowledge. 



IX. 

THE POWER OF WORDS. 

WORDS govern the world. Let any one who doubts 
it, canvass the motives by which his own action is 
decided. Considerations are presented to his mind, show- 
ing him that a certain course of conduct is right, or good, 
or expedient, or pleasant, and he adopts it. The consider- 
ations presented to his mind decide his action. But those 
considerations are in the form of arguments, and those 
arguments exist in words. The true original power, in- 
deed, is in the thought. It is the thinker who generates 
the steam. But thought unexpressed accomplishes nothing. 
The writer and the speaker engineer it into action. 

Thought, indeed, even in the mind of its originator, 
exists in words. For we really think only in words. 
Much more, then, must the thought have some verbal 
expression, written or spoken, before it can influence the 
opinions or the actions of others. A man may have all 
the wisdom of Solomon, yet will he exercise no influence 
upon human affairs unless he gives his wisdom utterance. 
Profound thinkers sometimes, indeed, utter very little. 
But they must utter something. They originate and give 
forth a few thoughts or discoveries, which minds of a 
difierent order, writers and talkers, pick up, reproduce, 
6 61 



62 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

multiply, and disseminate all over the surface of 
society. When a man unites these two functions, being 
both an original thinker and a skilful and industrious 
writer, the influence which he may exert upon his race is 
prodigious. If any one, for instance, w^ould take the pains 
to trace the influences which have sprung from such a 
man as Plato, he would have an illustration of what is 
meant. Plato, while living, had no wealth, rank, or posi- 
tion of any kind, to add force to what he said or did. 
Whatever he has done in the world, he has done simply 
by his power as a thinker and a writer. There were many 
Grecians quite as subtle and acute in reasoning as he. 
But their thoughts died with them. Plato, on the other 
hand, was an indefatigable writer, as well as an acute and 
profound thinker. He gave utterance to his ideas in 
words which, even in a dead language, have to this day a 
living power. When Plato was dead, there remained his 
written words. They remain still. They have entered 
successively into the philosophies, the creeds, and the prac- 
tical codes, of the Grecian world, the Roman, the Saracen, 
and the Christian. At this very hour hundreds of millions 
of human beings unconsciously hold opinions which the 
words of that wise old Greek have helped to mould. The 
mere brute force of a military conqueror may make arbi- 
trary changes in the current of human affairs. But no 
permanent change is ever made except by the force of 
opinion. The words of Plato have done more to influence 
the destinies of men than have a hundred such men as 
Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. Four hundred millions of 
Chinese, in half the actions which go to make up their lives, 



THE POWER OF WORDS. 63 

are now governed by maxims and opinions which have 
come down to them from remote antiquity, from a man 
whose very existence is almost a myth. Those military 
heroes whose influence on society has been permanent have 
been propagandists as well as warriors. Opinions and 
codes have gone with, and survived, their conquering 
armies. The armies of the elder Napoleon were routed at 
Waterloo. But the Napoleonic ideas survived the shock, 
and they are at this day a part of the governing power 
of the world. It was the Koran — the words, and the 
creed of Mahomet — that gave to the Mahometan conquest 
its permanent hold upon the nations. 

Spoken words have in themselves greater power than 
merely written ones. There is a wonderful influence in 
the living voice to give force and emphasis to what is 
uttered. But the written word remains. What is lost in 
immediate effect, is more than gained in the permanent 
result. The successful writer has an audience for all time. 
He being dead still speaks. Men are speaking now, who 
have gone to their final account twenty centuries ago. 
Paul possibly may not have had the same influence with 
a popular assembly as the more eloquent Apollos. But 
Paul is speaking still through his ever-living Epistles. 
He is speaking daily to more than a hundred millions of 
human beings. He is exerting through his writings a 
power incomparably greater than that even which he 
exercised as a living speaker. 

All men have not the commanding gifts of the apostle 
Paul. Yet after all, the main difference between ordinary 
men and men of the Pauline stamp, is not so much 



64 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

in their natural powers, as in the spirit and temper 
of the men, in that entire consecration to the service of 
Christ which Paul had, and which they have not. It is 
wonderful to see how much may be accomplished even by 
men of ordinary talents, when they have that zeal and 
single-mindedness which may be attained by one as well 
as by another. We are accountable for the talents which 
we have, not for what we have not. But let each man see 
to it that he uses to the utmost every talent which his 
Lord has committed to his trust. 

How much, for instance, may be accomplished by a 
man who has a gift for addressing a popular assembly ! 
Such a man by a few wise words, spoken at the right time 
and place, may do as much in five minutes, in pushing 
forward a general cause, as another man can do by the 
laborious drudgery of years. The words of the speaker 
touch the secret springs of action in a thousand breasts. 
He sends away a thousand men and women animated with 
a new impulse to duty, and that impulse is propagated 
and reproduced through hundreds of channels for long 
years to come. 

Words are never entirely idle. They have at times a 
power like that of the electric bolt. They may sting like 
a serpent, and bite like an adder. In the ordinary inter- 
course of society, a man of good conversational powers 
may, even in discharging the customary civilities of 
life, put forth a large influence. The words dropped from 
minute to minute, throughout the day, in the millions of 
little transactions all the while going on between man 
and man, have an incalculable power in the general aggre- 
gate of the forces which keep society in motion. 



THE POWER OF WORDS. 65 

As with spoken, so with written words. The man who 
knows how to weave them into combinations which shall 
gain the popular ear, and sink into the popular heart, has 
a mighty gift for good or evil. The self-denying and 
almost saintly Heber, by all his years of personal toil on 
the plains of India, did not accomplish a tithe of what 
has been accomplished for the cause of missions by his 
one Missionary Hymn. It would hardly be an exagger- 
ation to say that those few written words are worth more 
to the cause than the lives of scores of ordinary mission- 
aries. How many anxious souls, just wavering between a 
right and a wrong decision, have been led to make the 
final choice, and to decide for Christ, by that beautiful 
hymn beginning " Just as I am, without one plea "? Who 
can doubt that the patient invalid of Torquay, in the 
hour that she penned those touching words, did more for 
the conversion of sinners than many a minister of the 
gospel has done in the course of a long and laborious life ? 
What a fund of consolation for pious hearts through all 
time is laid up in the hymns of that other sweet singer, 
Mrs. Steele? 

But as with spoken, so with written words, the great 
aggregate of their force is not contained in these few bril- 
liant and striking exceptions, but in the millions of mere 
ordinary paragraphs which meet the eye from day to day, 
in the columns of the daily and weekly press, and which 
have apparently but an ephemeral existence. The dashing 
torrent and the mighty river are the more noticeable 
objects to the casual observer. But it is the minute myriad 

drops of the rain and the dew that cause the real wonders 

6* 



6Q IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

of vegetation. So these words which we read, and think 
we forget, hour by hour, all day long, are continually sink- 
ing into the soil of the heart, and influencing impercep- 
tibly the growth of the germs of thought. The aggregate 
of all these minute, unnoticed influences is prodigious, 
incalculable. 

Whoever can put words together wisely, either by the 
tongue or the pen, has a precious talent, which he may 
not innocently lay up in a napkin. The gift, like that of 
wealth, is not his by right of ownership, but only as a 
steward. It is his as a means to do good for the honor of 
his Lord, and the welfare of his fellow-men. As I said 
in the beginning of these remarks, the world is governed 
by words. Let Christian men, by the industrious use of 
the gifts they have received, see to it that a greater pro- 
portion of this governing force in the world is contributed 
by the friends of Christ. Let them unceasingly fill up 
with the words of truth and righteousness every accessible 
channel of thought and opinion, and thus occupy till 
Christ come. 



X. 

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 

THE study of language has ever been considered a study 
of high importance, regarded merely as a means of 
intellectual cultivation. 

There are obvious reasons for this. The analysis of lan- 
guage is the analysis of thought. Kesolving complex 
forms of speech into simple ones, and again combining 
simple expressions into those which are complex, and in- 
vestigating, alternately by logic and sesthetics, the varying 
properties of words and ^phrases, are operations which 
come nearer, perhaps, than any other in which we are 
engaged, towards subjecting spirit itself to the crucible of 
experiment. The study of grammar, the comparison of 
languages, the translation of thought from one language 
to another, are so many studies in logic and the laws of 
mind. The subtleties of language arise from the very 
nature of that subtle and mysterious essence, the human 
mind, of which speech is the prime agent and medium of 
communication. 

The class of studies under consideration bears nearly 
the same relation to the spiritual that anatomy does to the 
bodily part of us. It is by the dissecting-knife of a keen 
and well-tempered logic, applied to the examination of 
the various forms which human thought assumes, that we 
most truly learn the very essence and properties of thought 
itself. It is this intimate, immediate, indissoluble con- 

67 



68 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

nection and correlation between mind and language, be- 
tween human thought and human speech, between the 
soul itself and the mould into which it is cast, that gives 
such importance to the general class of studies known as 
philological. 

The study of language, more than any other study, 
tends to make the mind acute, discriminating, and exact. 
It tends also, in a most especial manner, to fit a person to 
train the minds of others to acuteness, discrimination, and 
exactness. The person who has learned to express a 
thought with entire exactness and idiomatic propriety in 
two languages ; or where, from the want of analogy be- 
tween the two languages, he finds this impracticable, to 
perceive the exact shade of difference between the two 
expressions ; who can trace historically and logically the 
present meaning of a word from its original starting-point 
in reason and fact, and mark intelligently its gradual 
departures and their causes ; who can perceive the exact 
difference between words and phrases nearly synonymous, 
and who can express that difference in terms clear and 
intelligible to others, — that person has already attained 
both a high degree of intellectual acumen himself, and an 
important means of producing such acumen in others. 

The study of language is, in the profession of teaching, 
like the sharpening of tools in the business of the me- 
chanic. Words are the teacher's tools. Human knowl- 
edge, even befoi'e it is expressed, and as it is laid up in 
the chambers of the mind, exists in words. We think in 
words. We teach in words. We are qualified to teach 
only so far as we have learned the use and power of words. 



XI. 

CULTIVATING THE VOICE. 

IF we except the lower kinds of handicraft, nine-tenths 
of all that is done in the world is done by means of 
the voice,— by talking. It is by talking we buy and sell ; 
by talking, the lawyer, the doctor, the minister, the teacher 
perform the chief of their functions ; by talking, the in- 
tercourse and machinery of life are chiefly kept in motion. 
As it was by a word that creation was accomplished, as 
the worlds came into being and were moulded into shape, 
not by the hand, but by the omnific voice of God, saying, 
" Let there be light and there was light," so in this lower 
sphere of human action, the tongue is mightier than the 
hand. The moulding, propelling forces of society come 
from the use of words. By words, more than by all other 
means, we persuade, convince, alarm, arouse, or soothe, or 
whatever else leads men to action and achievement ; and 
while written words are full of power, yet even these are 
feeble as compared with spoken words, the living utter- 
ances of the human voice. Not only so, but the manner 
of speaking, the tone and quality of the voice influence 
us quite as much as the words spoken. 

Yet how strangely we neglect this wonderful instrument. 
The mechanic sees to it that his tools are as keen and 

69 



70 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

strong as it is in the power of art and labor to make them. 
The sportsman spares no expense or care to have the 
articles that minister to his pleasure in the highest possible 
state of finish and perfection. How lavish we are in the 
purchase of instruments of music, and in keeping them 
properly tuned and cared for. Yet this most wonderful 
organ, the voice, which God has given to every one of us, 
and which is worth more to us than all the instruments of 
music, all the inventions of pleasure, all the tools of trade, 
that human skill has devised, is left for the most part in 
utter neglect, without intelligent guidance, its wonderful 
powers almost totally uncultivated and undeveloped. We 
all feel the sway that a well cultivated and modulated 
voice has upon us, its power to give us pleasure and win 
our assent, and yet the great majority of us neglect to 
cultivate in ourselves that which may give us such a 
power over others. We are not oblivious of other advan- 
tages. We strive to make ourselves acceptable and to 
increase our influence, by attention to dress, by the adorn- 
ment of our persons, and by the cultivation of our minds, 
by stores of knowledge and by accomplishments of various 
kinds, while the voice, which more than anything else is 
the direct instrument of the soul, is treated with neglect. 

We mumble and mutter what should come out clearly 
and distinctly ; we speak with a nasal drawl, or in a sharp 
key that sets all the finer chords of sympathy ajar ; we 
use just so much of the vocal power that is given us as is 
needed to express in the faintest way our most imperative 
wants, and indolently leave all the rest of its untold and 
exquisite resources to go to waste. 



CULTIVATING THE VOICE. 71 

Mrs. Siddons once made a shopkeeper turn pale with 
affright and unconsciously drop his goods upon the counter, 
simply by the tone in which, by way of experiment, she 
asked him the price of a pair of gloves. Undoubtedly 
Mrs. Siddons had natural gifts of voice which do not be- 
long to every one. But a great part of the wonderful 
fascination which she and the other members of that 
remarkable family exerted, was due to cultivation. 

If ministers of the gospel, and others who undertake to 
influence the minds of a congregation on the side of re- 
ligion, would give this matter more attention, they would 
find it very greatly to their own advantage and that of 
others. The manner in which the words of eternal life 
are read and uttered from the pulpit is often such as to kill 
all vitality out of them. It is not enough that a preacher 
should be a good theologian, and that his sermon contain 
sound and valuable thoughts. The influence which they 
are to exert upon the people, is largely dependent upon the 
voice which gives them utterance. A competent teacher of 
elocution is quite as important a part of the machinery of 
a theological seminary, as a teacher of Hebrew. Yet, in 
organizing our seminaries, this matter is usually entirely 
ignored. 



XII. 

EYES. 

I HAVE spoken much of blackboards, maps, pictorial 
cards, natural objects, and apparatus of various kinds, 
as among the urgent wants of the teacher. But there is 
one thing which he wants more than all these, and that is 
EYES. A good pair of eyes are to the teacher, in the gov- 
ernment of his school, worth more than the rod, more than 
any system of merit or demerit marks, more than keeping 
in after school, more than scolding, reporting to parents, 
suspension, or expulsion, more than coaxing, premiums, 
and bribes in any shape or to any amount. The very first 
element in school government, as in every other govern- 
ment, is that the teacher should know what is going on in 
his little kingdom, and for this knowledge he needs a pair 
of eyes. 

Most teachers, it is true, seem to be furnished with this 
article. But it is in appearance only. They have some- 
thing in the upper part of the face which looks like eyes, 
but every one knows that appearances are deceiving. They 
look over a school or an assembly of any kind, and are 
vaguely conscious that things are going on wrong all 
around them, just as people sometimes grope about in a 
dark room filled with bats, and are aware that something 

72 



EYES. 73 

is flitting about, but they have no power of seeing distinctly 
any one object. It is amazing how little some people see, 
who seem to have eyes. 

The fact is, there is an entirely mistaken notion on this 
whole subject. Having the eyes open, and seeing, are two 
distinct things. Infants have their eyes open, but they do 
not see anything, in the sense in which that word is gen- 
erally used. Light comes into those open windows, the 
moving panorama of external nature passes before them, 
but distinct vision, which recognizes and individualizes 
objects, is something more than a mere passive, bodily 
sensation. It is a mental act. It is the mind rousing it- 
self into consciousness, and putting forth its powers into 
voluntary and self-determined activity. Nothing in the 
history of childhood is more interesting than to watch this 
awakening of the mind in infancy, to notice how the whole 
face brightens up when the little stranger first begins 
actually to see things. 

The misfortune with many people is, that in this matter 
of vision they seem never to get beyond the condition of 
infancy. They go along the street, or they move about in 
a room, in a sort of dreamy state, their eyes open, but 
seeing nothing. A teacher of this kind, no matter what 
amount of disorder is going on before him, never sees any 
one particular act. He sees things in the mass, instead of 
seeing individual things. The difference between teachers 
in this faculty of seeing things is more marked probably 
than in any other quality that a man can have. Two 
teachers may stand before the same class. One will merely 
be aware that there is a general disorder and noise through- 



74 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

out, being unable to identify any scholar in particular as 
transgressing. The other will notice that John is talking, 
that James is pulling his neighbor's hair, that William is 
drumming on the desk with his fingers, that Andrew is 
munching an apple, that Peter is making caricatures on his 
slate, and so on. 

To have this power of seeing things, it is not necessary 
that one should be sly, or should use stealth of any kind. 
Knowledge gained by such mean practices never amounts 
to much, and always lowers a teacher in the estimation of 
his scholars; it weakens instead of strengthening him. 
Whatever a teacher does in the way of observation of his 
scholars, should be done openly and aboveboard. And 
after all, more can be seen in this way, by one who knows 
how, than by any of the stealthy practices usually resorted 
to. Darting the eyes about rapidly in one direction and 
another, is not a good way to make discoveries. Seeing is 
accomplished, not so much by the activity of the bodily 
organ, as by mental activity. The man's mind must be 
awake. This in fact is the secret of the whole matter. 
The more the face and eyes are quiet, and the mind is on 
the alert, the more a man will see. Seeing is rather a 
mental than a bodily act, though of course the bodily 
organ is necessary to its accomplishment. To be a good 
observer, one must maintain a quiet and composed de- 
meanor, but be thoroughly wide awake within. 



XIII. 

ERRORS OF THE CAVE. 

IMPROVEMENT comes by comparison. One of the 
most profound observations of Bacon is that in which 
he remarks upon the dwarfing and distorting influence of 
solitariness upon the human faculties. The man who 
shuts himself up in his own little circle of thought and 
action as in a cave, having no consort with his fellows, 
evolving all his plans from his own solitary cogitation, 
must be more than human if he does not become one-sided, 
narrow, selfish, bigoted. 

A like result, but not so aggravated, is produced, when 
a man limits his range of thought and action to those of 
his own special calling or profession ; when the merchant 
mingles only with merchants and knows only merchandise ; 
when the teacher knows nothing but teaching and books ; 
when the medical man spends every waking hour and 
every active exercise of thought upon his healing art; 
when any man forgets that, in the very fact of his being a 
man at all, he is something greater and nobler than he can 
possibly be in being merely a merchant, or teacher, or 
doctor, or lawyer, or the possessor of any other one special 
art or faculty. 

It is true, indeed, that in order to attain to eminence in 

75 



76 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

any one department, a man must bend his main energies 
to that one thing ; and he must give to it much solitary- 
thought and study. But no department of action is iso- 
lated. No interest is unconnected with other interests. 
No truth stands alone, but forms a part in the great system 
of truth. Study or action, therefore, which is entirely iso- 
lated, must needs be dwarfed and distorted. 

A man must go occasionally out of his own sphere in 
order fully to understand those very things with which he 
is most familiar. A man must study other languages, if 
he would hope fully to understand his own. A man must 
study more than languages merely if he would become a 
perfect linguist. The only way to understand arithmetic 
thoroughly is to study algebra. A parent who has only 
one child, and who gives his entire and exclusive attention 
to the study of that child, in order that he may, by a thor- 
ough understanding of its nature and disposition, be better 
able to teach and train it, will not be so likely to attain 
his object as he would if he were to spend a portion of 
his time in mingling with other children and in becoming 
acquainted with childhood generally. A teacher who 
should shut himself up in his own school-room, giving to 
it every moment of his waking hours, would not be likely 
to benefit so largely his own pupils, as if he were to spend 
a portion of his time in communing with other teachers and 
observing other methods besides his own. A teacher even 
who should mingle freely with those of his own profession, 
and get all the benefit to be derived from observation of 
the views and methods of other teachers, but should stop 
there, would not yet obtain that broad, comprehensive 



ERRORS OF THE CAVE. 77 

view, even of his own calling, and of the duties of his own 
particular school-room that he might have if he would 
travel occasionally beyond the walk of books and peda- 
gogy, and become acquainted with the views and methods 
of men in other spheres of life, with merchants, lawyers, 
and doctors, with farmers, mechanics, and artisans. 

It is only by mingling with those outside of our own 
little specialty that we are disenthralled from the bonds 
of prejudice. It is wonderful to see the change produced 
in the minds of men of different religious denominations, 
when by any means they are thrown much into the actual 
fellowship of working together in some cause of common 
benevolence. How, without any argument, merely by the 
fact of their being brought out to a different point of view, 
the relative magnitude and importance of certain truths 
change in their estimation ! The points in which Chris- 
tians differ become so much smaller ; the points in which 
they agree become so much larger. The little stone at the 
mouth of the cave no longer hides the mountain in the 
distance. 

Let the teacher, the merchant, the mechanic, the banker, 
the lawyer, the minister of religion even, still remember 
that he is a man, and that he can never reach a full and 
just estimate of his own position without sometimes going 
outside of it and placing himself in the position of other 
men. 

7* 



XIV. 

MEN OF ONE IDEA. 

THERE is between the teacher and other operatives one 
obvious difference, arising from the difference in the 
materials upon which their labor is bestowed. That class 
of laborers whose toil and skill are exerted in modifying 
the forms of matter, succeed generally in proportion to 
the narrowness of the range to which each individual's 
attention is confined. It is possible (the writer has known 
it to be a fact) for the same person to sow the flax, to pull 
and rot it, to break it, hatchel it, spin it, warp it, weave 
it, dye or bleach it, and finally make it into clothes. I 
say this is possible, for I have seen it done, and I dare say 
many of my readers have seen the same. But how coarse 
and expensive is such a product, compared with that in 
which every step in the progress of production is made 
the subject of one individual's entire and undivided at- 
tention. 

If we were to go into the factories of Lowell, or into 
any of the thousand workshops which are converting Phil- 
adelphia into a great manufacturing centre, we would find 
the manufacture of an article approaching perfection just 
in proportion to the mperfection (in one sense) of the in- 
dividual workmen employed in its production. The man 
78 



MEN OF ONE IDEA. 79 

wlio can make a pin-head better and cheaper than any- 
one else, must give his attention to making pin-heads only. 
He need not know how to point a pin, or polish it, or cut 
the wire. On the contrary his skill in that one operation 
increases ordinarily in proportion to his want of skill in 
others. His perfection as a workman is in the direct ratio 
to his imperfection as a man. He operates upon matter, 
and the more nearly he can bring his muscles and his 
volitions to the uniformity and the precision of a mere 
machine — the more confined, monotonous, and undeviating 
are his operations — the higher is the price set upon his 
work, the better is he fitted for his task. 

Not so the instructor of youth. The material operated 
on here is of a nature too subtle to be shaped and fashioned 
by the undeviating routine of any such mechanical opera- 
tions. The process necessary to sharpen one intellect may 
terrify and confound another. The means which in one 
instance serve to convince, serve in other cases to confuse. 
The illustration which to one is a ray of light, is to another 
only " darkness visible." Mind is not, like matter, fixed 
and uniform in its operations. The workman Vv^ho is to 
operate upon a substance so subtle and so varying must 
not be a man of one idea — who knows one thing, and 
nothing more. It is not true in mind, as in matter, that 
perfection in the knowledge of one particular point is 
gained by withdrawing the attention from every other 
point. All truth and all knoAvledge are affiliated. The 
knowledge of arithmetic is increased by that of algebra, the 
knowledge of geography by that of astronomy, the knowl- 
edge of one language by knowing another. As no one 



80 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

thing in nature exists unconnected with other things, so no 
one item in the vast sum of human knowledge is isolated, 
and no person is likely to be perfectly acquainted with 
any one subject who confines his attention with microscopic 
minuteness to that subject. To understand thoroughly one 
subject, you must study it not only in itself, but in its 
relations. To know one thing well you must know very 
many other things. 

Let us return then to the point from which we set out, 
namely : that one important difference between the teacher 
and other operatives arises from the difference in the ob- 
jects on which they operate. The one operates upon mat- 
ter, the other upon mind. The one attains perfection in 
his art by a process which in the other would produce an 
ignoramus, a bungler, a narrow-minded, conceited charla- 
tan. Hence the necessity on the part of those who would 
excel ill the profession of teachers, of endeavoring contin- 
ually to enlarge the bounds of their knowledge. Hence 
the error of those who think that to teach anything well 
it is necessary to know only that one thing. That young 
woman who undertakes to teach a primary school, or even 
an infant class, has mistaken her calling if she supposes 
that because she has to teach only the alphabet or the 
" table card," she has therefore no need to know many 
other things. There are some things which every teacher 
needs. Every teacher needs a cultivated taste, a disci- 
plined intellect, and that enlargement of views which re- 
sults only from enlarged knowledge. 

We all know how much we are ourselves benefited by 
associating habitually with persons of superior abilities. 



MEN OF ONE IDEA. 81 

So it is in a still higher degree with children. There is 
something contagious in the fire of intellect. The human 
mind, as well as the human heart, has a wonderful power 
of assimilation. Every judicious parent will say: Let 
not my child be consigned to the care of an ill-informed, 
dull, spiritless teacher. Let it be his happy lot, if pos- 
sible, to be under one who has some higher ambition than 
merely to go through a certain prescribed routine of duties 
and lessons ; one whose face beams with intelligence and 
whose lips drop knowledge; one who can cultivate in 
him the disposition to inquire, by his own readiness and 
ability to answer childish inquiries ; who can lead the in- 
quiries of a child into proper channels, and train him to 
a correct mode of thinking by being himself familiar 
with the true logical process, by having himself a culti- 
vated understanding. Such a teacher finds a pleasure in 
his task. He finds that he is not only teaching his pupils 
to read and to spell, to write and to cipher, but he is 
acquiring an ascendancy over them. He is exerting upon 
them a moral and intellectual power. He is leaving, upon 
a material far more precious than any coined in the Mint, 
the deep and inerasible impress of his own character. 

Let me repeat then, at the risk of becoming tiresome, 
what I hold to be an important and elementary truth, that 
the teacher should know very many things besides what 
he is required to teach. A good knowledge of history will 
enable him to invest the study of geography with new 
interest. Acquaintance with algebra will give a clearness 
to his perceptions, and consequently to his mode of incul- 
cating the principles, of arithmetic. The ability to de- 



82 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

lineate off-hand with chalk or pencil the forms of objects, 
gives him an unlimited power of illustrating every subject, 
and of clothing even the dullest with interest. Famil- 
iarity with the principles of rhetoric and with the rules of 
criticism, gives at once elegance and ease to his language, 
and the means of more clearly detecting what is faulty in 
the language of others. A knowledge of Latin or of 
French, or of any language besides his own, throws upon 
his own language a light of which he before had no con- 
ception. It produces in his ideas of grammar and of lan- 
guage generally, a change somewhat like that which the 
anatomist experiences from the study of comparative anat- 
omy. The student of the human frame finds many things 
that he cannot comprehend until he extends his inquiries 
to other tribes of animals ; to the monkey, the ox, the rep- 
tile, the fish, and even to the insect world. So it is with 
language. We return from the study of a foreign language 
invariably with an increased knowledge of our own. We 
have made one step at least from the technicalities of par- 
ticular rules towards the principles and truths of general 
grammar. 

But it is not necessary to multiply illustrations. I have 
already said enough to explain my meaning. Let me say, 
then, to every teacher, as you desire to rise in your profes- 
sion, as you wish to make your task agreeable to yourself 
or profitable to your pupils, do not cease your studies as 
soon as you gain your election, but continue to be a 
learner as long as you continue to be a teacher, and espe- 
cially strive by all proper means, and at all times, to en- 
large the bounds of your knowledge. 



XV. 

A TALENT FOR TEACHINa. 

npHERE can be no doubt that some persons have a nat- 
-*- ural aptitude for teaching. As there are born poets, so 
there are born teachers. Yet the man born with the true 
poetic temperament and faculty will never achieve success 
as a poet, unless he add study and labor to his natural 
gift. So the man born with a talent for teaching needs to 
cultivate the talent by patient study and practice, before 
he can become a thoroughly accomplished teacher. No 
man probably ever showed greater native aptitude for any- 
thing, than did Benjamin "West for painting. Yet what 
long years of toil and study it took for him to become a 
really great painter ? In teaching, as in every other pro- 
fession, while men doubtless differ as to their original 
qualifications and aptitudes, yet the differences are not so 
great as they are often supposed to be, and they are by no 
means so great as those produced by study and practice. 
The man who has no special gift for this employment, but 
who faithfully and intelligently tries to perfect himself in 
it, is sure to be a better teacher than the one who has the 
natural gift, but adds to it no special study and prepara- 
tion. Indeed, if we exclude from consideration those very 
nice and delicate touches in education, which are so rare 

83 



84 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

as to be quite exceptional, there is nothing in the business 
of teaching which may not be acquired by any person of 
average ability. 

When, therefore, we see a teacher not succeeding in 
gaining the attention of his scholars, or in securing obedi- 
ence and respect, or in bringing them forward in their les- 
sons, we are not disposed to free such a person from blame 
on the plea of his having no natural aptitude for teaching. 
We would respectfully say to such a teacher : if you know 
not how to impart knowledge^ learn how ; if you have no 
tact, get it. Teaching is a business, as much as knitting 
stockings, or planting corn. Either do not undertake to 
teach at all, or learn how it is to be done. 

If one-fourth of the labor bestowed upon the work of 
teaching were devoted to studying the business, the value 
of the remaining three-fourths would be quadrupled. It 
is painful to see the amount of hard work done in school 
with so little proportionate effect. If a man who knew 
nothing of farming, but who had a desire to be useful, 
were to dig a pit and bury therein a bushel of corn, and 
imagine that he was planting, his labor would not be wider 
of the mark than much that is bestowed in school. A 
man must learn how to do even so simple a thing as plant- 
ing corn. Let the teacher also learn how to plant the 
seeds of knowledge, how to prepare the soil, how to open 
it for the reception of truth, where and when to deposit 
the precious grains. 

I have no desire to discourage those faithful men and 
women who are so nobly striving to do good as teachers. 
But I cannot help expressing the regret that so much of 



A TALENT FOR TEACHING. 85 

this labor is without adequate result. Why should persons 
act so differently in this matter from what they do in any 
other ? If a woman wants to make a pair of stockings, 
she goes to some other woman who understands knitting, 
and sees how it is done, and learns the stitches, tries and 
experiments, and studies the matter, until it is all familiar 
to her. So of any other ordinary business. Yet when it 
comes to teaching, anything like definite study or observa- 
tion of the mode of doing it, is almost unknown ! It is 
really no exaggeration to say that many teachers bungle 
in their work as egregiously as would a woman who should 
put yarn into a churn, and expect, after a proper amount 
of churning, to draw out stockings. 

In our schools are many professional teachers of ap- 
proved skill. Why should not a school-teacher, who is 
conscious of not succeeding as he would desire, spend an 
hour occasionally in observation ? Find out the name of 
some teacher who is particularly successful, and look on 
while the work is being done, and if possible see how it is 
done. 

Then again, there are books on the subject, in which 
the business of teaching is explained in all its branches. 
Get some of these books and read. The mere reading 
will not make you teachers. But it will set you to think- 
ing. It will quicken your power of observation. It will 
help you to learn from your own experience. 

Make a note of the difficulties you encounter, and the 
points in which you cannot accomplish what you desire. 
Very likely you will find these very difficulties discussed 
in the books on teaching which you are reading. If not. 



86 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

lay your difficulties before some friend who is a successful 
teacher, and get advice. Anything, rather than going on, 
week after week, without improvement. There is a way 
of interesting your class in their lessons, of securing good 
order and punctual attendance, of making the scholars 
learn. Only make up your mind that you will find out 
what that way is. If you think it cannot be done, of 
course it will not be done. If you have fairly made up 
your mind that it may be done, and that you can do it, it 
is half done already. 

You have no idea how much more pleasant the work 
will be, when you have once learned how to do it. One 
reason why so many teachers desert the ranks, is the irk- 
someness produced by want of success. Few things are 
more intolerable than being obliged to do a thing while 
conscious of doing it in an awkward and bungling manner. 
On the other hand, almost any work is a pleasure, which 
one is conscious of doing well. 



XVI. 

TEACHING POWER. 

TEACHERS differ greatly in their ability to bring a 
class forward in intellectual acquisition and growth. 
With one teacher pupils are all life and energy, they take 
hold of difficulties with courage, their ideas become clear, 
their very power of comprehension seems to gather strength. 
With another teacher, those same pupils, studying the 
same subject, are dull, heavy, easily discouraged, and 
make almost no progress. The ability thus to stimulate 
the intellectual activity of others, to give it at once mo- 
mentum and progress, is the true measure of one's teach- 
ing power. It may be well to consider for a moment some 
of the conditions necessary to the existence and the exer- 
cise of this power. 

In the first place, we can exert no great, commanding 
influence over others, whether pupils or not, unless we 
have in a high degree their confidence. Pupils must have 
faith in their teacher. I never knew an instance yet, 
where there was great intellectual ferment going on in a 
class, that the pupils did not believe the teacher infallible, 
or very nearly so. This principle of confidence in leader- 
ship is one of the great moving powers of the world. In 

teaching, it is specially important. This feeling may in- 

87 



88 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

deed be in excess. It may exist to such an extent as to 
extinguish all independence of thought, to induce a blind, 
unquestioning receptivity. Such an extreme is of course 
opposed to true mental progress. But short of this extreme 
point, there is almost no amount of faith that children can 
have in their teacher, that, if well founded, is not of the 
highest advantage. Seeing the firm, assured tread of 
father or mother, or of an older brother or sister, is a great 
aid to the tottering little one in putting forth its own steps 
while learning to walk. So the child is emboldened to 
send out its young, unpractised thoughts, by the confidence 
it has in the guidance and protection of its teacher. To 
acquire and retain the proper ascendancy over the mind 
of a child, two things are essential, ample knowledge and 
entire honesty. Shallowness and pretension may mislead 
for a while. But to hold a child firmly and permanently, 
the teacher must abound in knowledge, and must have 
thoroughly honest convictions. 

The next condition to great teaching power is confidence 
in one's self. A timid, irresolute, hesitating utterance of 
one's own convictions fails to produce conviction in the 
minds of others. I do not recommend self-conceit. It 
is not necessary to be dogmatic. Yet a certain style of 
self-assertion, bordering very closely upon these qualities, is 
needed in the teacher. In the higher regions of science 
and opinion, there are of course many points about which 
no one, at least no one well informed, would undertake 
to speak with authority. Such subjects it becomes us all 
to approach with reverent humility, as at the best only 
inquirers after truth. But the case is very different with 



TEACHING POWER. 89 

teachers of the common branches concerned in our present 
remarks. On these points the teacher ought to have a 
certainty and a readiness of knowledge, so as to be thor- 
oughly self-reliant before the class. Teaching is like fight- 
ing. Self-reliance is half the battle. 

Equally important with the former is it to have the 
affection of one's pupils. Writers on metaphysics now-a- 
days dwell much, and very properly, on the influence of 
the body upon the mind, and the necessity of a healthy 
condition of the former in order to the full clearness and 
strength of our intellectual apprehensions. There is a 
still more intimate connection between our moral emotions 
and our mental action. The wish is father to the thought, 
in more senses than that intended by Shakspeare. If the 
intellect is the seeing power of the soul, the affections are 
the atmosphere through which we look. The same object 
may appear to us very differently, as it is seen through 
the colorless medium of pure intellectual perception, or as 
it is enlarged and glorified by the mellowing haze of fond 
affection, or as it is distorted and obscured by the mists of 
prejudice and hate. When a child has a thorough dislike 
for a subject or for his teacher, the difficulty of learning 
is very greatly increased. Not only is the willingness to 
study weak or wanting, but the very power of mental 
perception seems to be obstructed. The power of attention, 
the power of apprehension, the power of memory, the 
power of reasoning, are all paralyzed by dislike, and are 
equally vitalized by love and desire. Mental action, in 
short, is influenced by the state of the heart as much as 
by the state of the body. If you do not expect great 
8* 



90 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

mental efforts from a child that is sickly, burning with 
fever, or racked with pain, neither may you expect the 
best and highest results from one whose heart is diseased 
and alienated, who approaches a subject with feelings of 
aversion and dislike, whose conceptions are clouded with 
prejudice. 

A teacher of great intellectual force, and with an over- 
bearing will, may push forward even a reluctant and a 
rebellious class with a certain degree of speed. On the 
other hand, a teacher who enjoys the unbounded love of 
his scholars, may accomplish comparatively little, on ac- 
count of lacking the other qualities needed for success. 
The highest measure of success in teaching is attained 
only where these several conditions meet, — where the 
teacher has and deserves the full confidence of the schol- 
ars, where he has full confidence in himself, is self-reliant 
and self-asserting, and where at the same time he has the 
warm affection of his pupils. Love, after all, is the gov- 
erning power of the human soul, as it is the crowning 
grace in the Christian scheme. Love is, in teaching, what 
sunshine and showers are in vegetation. By a system of 
forcing and artificial culture, the gardener may indeed 
produce a few hot-house plants, but for all great or gen- 
eral results, he must look to the genial operations of 
nature. 



XVII. 

GROWING. 

CHILDREN often use the terra "grown-up people." 
By it they mean persons who have come to the age 
of twenty, or twenty-one, and whose bodily growth is com- 
plete. But there are other kinds of growth, besides that 
of the body. 

What is a "grown-up" teacher f It is not difficult, 
certainly, to find some, in every locality, to whom this 
term could not be applied, with any propriety. They have 
been engaged for years in the work, and yet they are the 
merest babes. They have no more skill than when they 
first took a class in hand. When a boy begins to use a 
penknife, he is very awkward. He cuts himself about as 
often as he cuts the stick. After a while, however, he 
learns to manage the matter better. He finds out how 
to handle the curious instrument with skill and even 
with elegance. But you will see teachers, so called, who 
seem never to make any of this progress in their work. 
They have no more idea now, than they had when they 
gave their first lesson, of what they must do to secure at- 
tention and silence, how they must manage to keep all the 
children busy, how to secure good attendance, or study of 

the lesson, how to gain affection and confidence, how to 

91 



92 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

enforce order and obedience, how to do anything, except 
to sit, book in hand, and ask the questions one after the 
other round the class, and see that John, George, and 
James severally say the answers correctly. This is the 
idea of teaching with which they begin, and they make no 
progress towards anything better. They acquire no skill. 
They make no growth. They are "grown-up" bodily. 
But in all that pertains to teaching, they are still babes. 
They whittle as awkwardly and unskilfully as when the 
delicate instrument was first put into their clumsy fingers. 
They go on from year to year and learn nothing. 

Some persons are born teachers, just as some are born 
poets or mechanics. That is, they are gifted with a natu- 
ral aptitude for that particular work. But those most 
gifted by nature, are capable of improvement, and those 
having least natural gifts for teaching, may acquire a 
certain and a very considerable amount of skill, by proper 
observation and study. The point which I wish to make, 
and which I deem important, is, that teachers should not 
rest content with their present qualifications, whatever they 
may be, whether large or small. Let it be the aim of 
every one to be a growing teacher. We come short, if we 
are not better teachers this year than we were last. We 
should aim and resolve to be better teachers next year 
than we are now. Our education as teachers should never 
be considered as finished. Forgetting the things which 
are behind, let us ever press forward. Let us constantly aim 
upward. Skill in teaching admits of infinite degrees, and 
no one will ever be perfect in it. Efforts at improvement, 
if persistently followed up, are always rewarded with sue* 



GEOWING. 93 

cess, and success in such a work brings a most sweet re- 
compense. What satisfaction is equal to that of feeling 
that one is steadily increasing in the power of guiding 
and moulding the minds of others ? Growing skill in any- 
thing, even in works requiring mechanical ingenuity, 
brings joy to the mind. How much more intense and pure 
the joy, when there is a consciousness of growth in this 
higher department of mental power ? 

Will the teacher, who reads these paragraphs, consider 
the matter ? Are you, as a teacher, growing ? or are you 
working on in dull content in the same old routine ? On 
your answer to these questions depend very largely, not 
only the welfare of your scholars and the amount of good 
you will achieve, but your own happiness and satisfaction 
in your work. The artist, who produces some great work 
of genius, has his reward not merely in the dollars which 
it may bring to his coffer, but in the inward satisfaction 
which successful achievement produces. The true artist 
is always struggling towards some unattainable ideal, and 
his joy is proportioned to the nearness of his approach to 
the imagined perfection. So in proportion as we approach 
in skill the great Teacher, will be our joy in the work 
itself, apart from our joy in the results. 

To be a growing teacher requires a distinct aim to this 
end, and a resolute and persistent effort. It does not come 
by chance. It is not a weed that springs up spontaneously, 
and matures without culture. It is not the fruit of mere 
wishing. There must be will, A determined and reso- 
lute WILL. Rules and theories will not accomplish it. 
There are books and essays in abundance on the art and 



94 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

practice of teaching. But back of means we must have, 
first of all, the propelling power. Have you made up your 
mind to be stationary, or have you resolved to go forward ? 
Will you remain in the wilderness, or will you advance 
into the promised land and take possession ? Are you a 
deliberate, predetermined, contented dwarf, or will you 
resolutely grow ? You may never become a giant, but do 
not remain an infant. 

If there is any one duty of the teacher more imperative 
than another, it is that of continued, persistent self-improve- 
ment. No element of progress is so efficient as a whole- 
some discontent. " I count not myself to have attained," 
says the great apostle of progress. To sit down self-satis- 
fied with present attainments is in itself a sign that you 
have not yet risen much. It is to belong to the owls and 
the bats of the lower valleys. One must already have 
ascended to lofty heights before he can even see the higher 
Alps towering beyond. 

The teacher who would improve must, in a good sense, 
be restless. He must bestir himself He must study and 
read and experimentj attend teachers' meetings and con- 
ventions, and take teachers' papers, and find out what 
other teachers are doing and have done, ever remembering 
that improvement comes mainly by comparison. 



XVIII. 

LOVING THE CHILDREN. 

SOME teachers make the mistake of supposing that a 
love for the work and a love for the children are one 
and the same thing. The two things are certainly sepa- 
rable in thought, and they are often actually separated in 
action. It is of some importance to teachers to remember 
the diftereuce. 

We see persons every day struggling with all their 
might to accomplish certain results. They have certain 
ideas which they wish to realize, certain theories which 
they wish to verify. To bring about these results, is a 
matter of pride with them. So that the end is gained, 
the means to be used are a matter of comparative indiffer- 
ence. Their heart is set on the result, they care nothing 
for the machinery by which it is brought about. Now, so 
long as the work is of a nature which requires only the 
use of mechanical powers, or of mere brute force, it is all 
very well. The sculptor need not fall in love with the 
block of marble on which he is working, in order to real- 
ize from it the conception of his mind. The engine which 
carries us thirty miles an hour towards the goal of our 
desires, will not speed us more or less for not being an 

object of our affections. But every man has a natural 

95 



96 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

and proper dislike to becoming a mere machine for carry- 
ing out the schemes of others. Children especially revolt 
at being treated in this way. If a teacher takes the charge 
of a class or of a school, for the purpose of showing to 
himself or to others how certain things may be done, the 
children are quick to find it out, and to resent it. No 
child, however humble or obscure, but feels indignant at 
being considered as a mere pawn upon a chess-board, or a 
mere wheel or pulley in some complicated piece of ma- 
chinery. Every individual child is to itself the centre of 
all human interests, and if you are to have any real and 
abiding influence upon him, he must first feel that you 
have a regard for himself, in his own proper person, inde- 
pendently of any schemes or plans of your own. 

You may love to see your children all present punctu- 
ally, to see them making a good appearance, and by their 
orderly behavior and manners helping forward the 
school generally ; you may love the work of teaching as 
giving you honorable and useful occupation. But some- 
thing more than this is wanting. You must love the chil- 
dren. You must love each particular child. You must 
become interested in each child, not for what it is to you, 
or to the class, or to the school, but for what it is in itself, 
as a precious jewel, to be loved and admired, for those im- 
mortal qualities and capacities which belong to it as a 
human being. No matter how degraded or depraved or 
forbidding in appearance that child may be, it has quali- 
ties which, if brought out, may make it more glorious than 
an angel. If Jesus loved him, you may love him. Jesus 
did not stand off at a distance from the loathsome and 



LOVING THE CHILDREN. 97 

filthy leper, while performing the miracle of healing. He 
first " touched " the leper, and said, " Be thou clean." We 
are sometimes too fastidious in our benevolence, and shrink 
too much from coming into contact with those whom we 
would befriend. 

Little real influence is ever produced upon any human 
being, without creating between you and him a bond of 
sympathy. If we would work strongly and efiiciently 
upon the minds of children, we must really love them, not 
in the abstract, not in a general way, but concretely and 
individually. We must love John and William and Mary 
and Susie, simply and purely because he or she is, in him- 
self or herself alone, an object of true interest and afiec- 
tion. In looking over a school, it is not difficult to dis- 
cover at a glance which teachers thus- love their children. 
It speaks in every word from the lips. It beams in every 
look from the eyes. It thrills in every tone of the voice. 
It has a language in the very touch of the hand and the 
movements of the person. 

Some persons are naturally more fond of children than 
others are. But those not naturally thus inclined may 
cultivate the disposition. They must do so if they mean 
to be teachers. No one is fitted to be a teacher, who has 
not learned to sympathize with the real wants and feelings 
of children. Pretence here is all wasted. Shams may do 
with grown persons sometimes, never with children. They 
have an instinctive perception of what is genuine and 
what is pretended, in professed love for them. In fact, 
the way to win the afiection of a child is to love him, not 
to make professions of love. 



98 IN THE SCHOOL-KOOM. 

It is not always tlie easiest thing in the world to exer- 
cise this love. A teacher may have the charge of a class 
of children whose appearance, manners, and dispositions 
are exceedingly forbidding, perhaps even loathsome. Yet 
observation and study will ordinarily discover some good 
quality even in the worst and most degraded. A talent 
for discovering what is good in a child is much more im- 
portant in the work of elevating him, than the smartness 
at detecting and exposing his tricks, in which some teach- 
ers take pride. It is a bad sign, though not an uncommon 
one, to see evidences of cunning in a teacher. Better by 
far to be outwitted and duped occasionally, than to forfeit 
that character of perfect sincerity and straightforwardness 
which secures the confidence of a child. The teacher who 
would love his children, particularly if he happens to 
have been entrusted with an unpromising class, must learn 
to wear the spectacles of charity. He must cultivate the 
habit of seeing things in their best light. While not 
blind to faults, he must be prompt and eagle-eyed to spy 
out every indication of good. Above all, he must remem- 
ber that no human soul, however degraded, is without 
some elements and possibilities of good, for whom there is 
the possibility that Christ died. 



XIX. 

GAINING THE AFFECTIONS OF THE SCHOLARS. 

fT^HE importance of this point is not to be measured by 
-■- the mere gratification it affords. It adds undoubtedly 
to the happiness of the teacher in his work, to know that 
his scholars love him. Nor is this a small consideration. 
The teacher has many vexatious rubs. He encounters 
much toil and self-denial ; and whatever tends to mitigate 
these asperities, and to make his labor sweet, is for that 
very reason important. The teacher has, for a part at 
least of his reward, the enjoyment of a love as pure and 
unselfish as any known upon earth. He will doubtless go 
forward in duty, even where he fails of obtaining this 
precious foretaste of the heavenly bliss, and he has doubt- 
less higher aims than any arising from mere gratification, 
of whatever sort. Yet a boon so great is not to be de- 
spised or ignored. The ardent love which scholars some- 
times give to their teachers is a high gratification, and 
something to be greatly prized for the mere pleasure it 
gives. 

And yet, after all, this is not its main value. The fact 
that children love their teacher, gives to the teacher almost 
unbounded influence over them. There is hardly a point, 
necessary to the success of a school or of a class, that 

99 



100 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

scholars will not readily yield to a teacher whom they love. 
By this silken cord they can be drawn whithersoever the 
teacher wills. To please teacher, they will attend regularly, 
will come punctually, will be quiet and orderly, will learn 
their lessons, will be attentive to instruction. More than 
all this, many a child, by the love of an earthly friend, has 
been led to the love of his heavenly Friend. The young 
heart is opened to receive the Saviour, by the warmth of 
its love for one who so manifestly bears his image. Per- 
haps there is no one, not even excepting a mother, who 
can so easily bring the young to the Saviour, as the teacher 
who has thoroughly succeeded in winning his scholars' 
affections. 

There is another consideration in this matter, not so 
weighty as the one named, yet of great importance, and 
the more worthy to be named, because it is generally not 
rightly understood. I refer to the fact that children will 
learn so much more readily under a teacher whom they 
love. Not only will they study better, and be more atten- 
tive, for the sake of pleasing their teacher, but by some 
mysterious process of the mind, love helps us to under- 
stand, as dislike disturbs and beclouds the understanding. 
When a child has a dislike or prejudice or ill-feeling of 
any kind against a teacher, or a subject of study, the effect 
upon the mind of the child is like that produced upon a 
spring of pure and sparkling water by stirring up the mud 
and sediment from the bottom. In the human organiza- 
tion the heart is at the bottom, and disturbing influences 
there cause us to see things through an impure medium. 
The calmness and serenity, produced by perfect love and 



GAINING THE AFFECTIONS. 101 

trust, are the proper conditions for the right and best 
working of the understanding. We must get the heart 
right if we would see truth clearly, and that teacher who 
has won the love of his scholars has done much towards 
making the path of knowledge easy for them. 

Let the teacher, then, aim to win the love of his schol- 
ars, first, because this love is in itself a boon to which the 
teacher has a rightful claim ; secondly, because it gives 
him a powerful influence in moulding the character and 
habits of the children, and especially in bringing them to 
the Saviour; and, thirdly, because it helps the scholars 
intellectually, enabling them to understand better and to 
learn faster. 

But how is this love to be gained ? 

Assuredly, not by demanding it as a right, or by fretting, 
complaining, or scolding because your scholars do not love 
you. Love only is the price for love. If you wish your 
scholars to love you, you must first love them, not pretend 
to do it, — children are quick to see through such pretences, 
— but really and truly love them. 

Many teachers, however, sincerely love their scholars, 
and yet do not succeed in winning their affections. Some- 
thing in their manner and ap)pearance is repulsive. There 
is in the face of some good people a hard and forbidding 
look, at which the heart takes alarm and retires within 
itself The young heart, like the young buds in spring- 
time, requires an atmosphere of warmth and sunshine. 
If we would draw forth their warm aflTections towards us, 
we must not only feel love towards them in our hearts, but 

we must wear sunshine in our faces. A pleasant smile, a 
9* 



102 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

loving word, a soft, endearing tone of the voice, goes a 
great way with a child, especially where it is not put on, 
but springs from a loving heart. 

Some teachers in avoiding this hard, repulsive manner, 
run to the opposite extreme, and lose the respect of their 
scholars by undue familiarity. Children do not expect 
you to become their playmate and fellow, before giving 
you their love and confidence. Their native tendency is 
to look up. They yearn for repose upon one superior to 
themselves. Only, when the tender heart of youth thus 
looks up, let it not be into a region filled with clouds and 
cold, but into a sky everywhere pervaded with a clear, 
steady, warm sunlight. Let there be no frown upon your 
brow, no harsh or angry word upon your lips, no exacting 
sternness in your eye. Let the love which you feel in 
your heart beam forth naturally and spontaneously in 
loving looks and words, and you need not fear but that 
you will meet with a response. 



XX. 

THE OBEDIENCE OF CHILDREN. 

THERE is much misapprehension as to the true nature 
of obedience. Wherein does obedience really consist ? 
What is its essence ? 

Merely doing a specified act, which has been required, 
is not necessarily an act of obedience. A father may 
have a rule of his household that the children shall rise 
in the morning at five o'clock. A son who habitually dis- 
regards this rule, may rise at the appointed time on a par- 
ticular morning, in order to join a companion on a fishing 
excursion, or for some object connected solely with his 
own pleasure and convenience. Here the external act is 
the one required. He rises at the hour enjoined by his 
father's command. But his doing so has no reference to 
his father's wishes. It is not in any sense an act of obe- 
dience. Something more than mere external compliance 
with a rule or a command is needed to constitute obedi- 
ence. In other words, not only the act itself must be the 
one required, but the motive must be right. 

If I am led to do what my father or my mother requires, 
by mere dint of coaxing, or by the expectation of cakes 
or pennies or promised indulgence of any kind, if it is a 
bargain, in which I give so much compliance for so much 

103 



104 IN THE SCHOOL-KOOM. 

per contra of self-gratification, the compliance rendered is 
not an act of obedience. As well might a man profess to 
obey his neighbor, because he gives him a bag of oats for 
a bag of corn. A great deal of what passes for obedience 
in families and schools, is mere barter. Strip the matter 
of all glosses and disguises, and the naked truth reriiains, 
that children are hired to do what the parent or the 
teacher wants to have done. They do not obey, in any le- 
gitimate and wholesome use of the word. They are quiet 
when they should be quiet, they learn the lessons which 
they should learn, they abstain from whatever things they 
should abstain from, because they have learned that this 
is the only way to gain the indulgences which they desire. 
The parent and the teacher use a motive adequate to secure 
the outward act, but they do not secure obedience. 

It is not obedience for a child to do a thing because his 
reason and conscience tell him that the act in itself, with- 
out reference to his parents' wishes, is right and proper. 
At least it is not filial obedience. I may be obeying my 
conscience, but I am not obeying my father. Many j^ar- 
ents, who are above the weakness of bribing their chil- 
dren, satisfy themselves by reasoning with them. Far be 
it from us to say a word against any legitimate ajDpeal to 
the reason and conscience of a child. Children, at the 
proper age, should be taught to reason and to judge for 
themselves, in regard to the right and wrong of actions, 
just as they should learn to walk alone, and not be forever 
dependent upon leading strings. Only, let it be under- 
stood that just so far as the child acts on its own indepen- 
dent judgment, the act is not one of filial obedience. 



OBEDIENCE OF CHILDREN. 105 

Obedience is doing a thing because another, having 
competent authority, has enjoined it. The motive neces- 
sary to constitute any act an act of obedience, is a refer- 
ence to the will and authority of another. It is submis- 
sion of our will to the will of another. The child receives 
as true what his parents say, and because they say it ; so, 
he does as right what they command, and because they com- 
mand it. That fact is, and in the first instance it should 
be, to the child's mind, the ultimate and suflSicient reason 
for either believing or doing — for faith or obedience. 
This faith and obedience rendered to my earthly father, 
which is only partial and temporary, besides serving its 
own immediate ends, in securing a well-ordered household 
and my own best interests as a child, has the further end 
of training me for that unqualified faith and obedience, 
which I am to render to my heavenly Father, and which 
is of universal and permanent obligation. One object of 
the parental relation seems to be to fit the soul for this 
higher obedience. I must, however, learn to obey my father 
simply because he is my father, and because as such he has 
the right to command me, if thereby I am to learn, for a 
like reason, to obey my heavenly Father. No lower mo- 
tive will secure the end. 

Submission to parental authority is not always the 
instinctive impulse of childhood. Where this submission 
is not yielded, it must be enforced. Authority, in other 
words, requires sanctions. The father has no right to 
command, unless he has the right to punish in case of dis- 
obedience. Furthermore, if he does not, especially in the 
early childhood of his offspring, train them to a habit of 
real obedience and submission to authority, he does his 



106 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

children a great wrong. He deprives them of the benefit 
of that habit of obedience, which will be of the utmost 
value to them in their future religious life. 

A man forbids his child to eat green apples. The child 
abstains. That abstinence is not necessarily an act of 
obedience. 

He may abstain because his mother offers, in case of 
his doing so, to give him sugar-plums, and he prefers the 
sugar-plums to the apples. This is not obedience. 

Or, his reason and experience may have taught him 
that the eating of green fruit will cause him sickness and 
pain, and so he abstains for the same reasons that his 
father, mother, or anybody else does. This is not obedience. 

But children often have not the forethought to look at 
remote consequences, or they have not the strength of 
purpose to deny a present gratification for the sake of a 
distant good, and especially for a good of which they have 
only a vague idea through the representations of their 
parents or teachers. Suppose such a case. Suppose a 
child with a strong inclination and desire for the thing 
forbidden, and with no clear apprehension that there is 
anything wrong or hurtful in the indulgence, except in 
the fact that the father has forbidden it, and with no 
temptation of a higher indulgence as a reward for abstain- 
ing. If, in such a case, the child abstains, he performs a 
true act of obedience. He really subjects his will to the 
will of his father. 

This kind of implicit obedience is greatly needed. It 
is to be secured just as our heavenly Father secures obe- 
dience to some of his laws. If a child thrusts his finger 
into the candle, he violates a law, and he instantly suffers 



OBEDIENCE OF CHILDEEN. 107 

for it. We are surrounded by many such laws, without 
the observance of which we could not live a day. To 
teach us obedience to these laws, the penalty of transgres- 
sion is immediate and sharp. There are other laws of our 
physical well-being, the penalties of which are remote, 
and in regard to those we have room for the exercise and 
cultivation of our reasoning powers. Now in childhood, 
there are many things which a child should be taught to 
forbear doing as promptly as he forbears to thrust his 
hand into the fire. Yet for these things there is no natu- 
ral penalty. Here the command of the parent should be 
interposed, and transgression should be promptly followed 
by penalty. The authority of the parent and the penal- 
ties by which he sustains it, guide the child during those 
years when reason and the power of self-denial are weak. 
But to make this discipline easy and effective, there should 
be no hesitation or uncertainty about the exercise of it. 
Parents often have to strain their authority, and use very 
largely their right of punishment, because they are so 
unequal and irregular in their methods of government. 
A child soon ceases to thrust his finger into the fire. Fire 
is not a thing which burns one day, and may be safely 
tampered with the next. So, if disobedience, invariably 
and promptly, without passion or caprice, and with the 
uniformity of a law of nature, brings such a penalty as to 
make the disobedience painful, there will be little trans- 
gression and little need of punishment. A child does not 
fret because he cannot play with fire. He will not fret 
because he cannot transgress a father's direct command, 
if he once knows that such commands mu8t be obeyed. 



XXI. 

RAREY AS AN EDUCATOR. 

PARENTS, teachers, and all who are charged with the 
duty of training the young, may learn important les- 
sons from the example of the late Mr. Rarey. The prin- 
ciples on which the horse is rendered obedient and docile 
do not differ essentially from those to be employed in the 
government of children or of men. 

Some of the accounts of Mr. Rarey's system, however, 
which have been published, are liable to mislead, and to fos- 
ter a mischievous error. His procedure was eminently kind 
and gentle. The horse became fully assured that no harm 
was intended towards him. This conviction is essential to 
success in securing a perfect and willing obedience, whether 
from brute or human. But the distinctness with which 
this feature of the treatment was brought out in Mr. Ra- 
rey's exhibitions, led some apparently to think that this 
was the main, if not the only feature. Kindness alone, 
however, will not tame, and will not govern, brutes or men. 
There must be power. There must be, in the mind of the 
party to be governed, a full conviction that the power of 
the other party is superior to his own — that there is, in 
the party claiming obedience, an ample reserve of power 
fully adequate to enforce the claim. The more complete 

108 



EAKEY AS AN EDUCATOR. 109 

this conviction is, the less occasion there will be for the 
exercise of the power. The most headstrong horse, once 
convinced that he is helpless in this contest of strength, 
and convinced at the same time that his master is his 
friend, may be led by a straw. 

Mr. Rarey went through various preliminary steps, the 
object of which was to make the horse acquainted with 
him, and to prevent fright or panic. But obedience was 
not claimed, and was not given, until there had been a 
demonstration of power — until the horse was convinced 
that the man was entirely too much for him. By a very 
simple adjustment of straps to the forefeet of the animal, 
he became perfectly helpless in the hands of his tamer. 
The struggle, indeed, was sometimes continued for a good 
while. The horse put forth his prodigious strength to the 
utmost. He became almost wild at the perfect ease and 
quietude with which all his eftbrts were baffled, until at 
length, fully satisfied that further struggles were useless, 
he made a complete surrender, and lay down as peaceful 
and submissive as an infant. 

This point is of some importance. I do not underrate 
the value of kindness and love in any system of govern- 
ment, whether in the household, the school, the stable, the 
menagerie, or in civil society. But love is not the basis 
of government. Obedience is yielded to authority, and 
authority is based on right and power. The child who 
complies with his father's wishes, only because a different 
course would make his father grieve, or give his mother a 
headache, or because his parents have reasoned with him 
and shown him that compliance is for his good, or who has 
10 



110 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

beeu wheedled into compliance by petty bribes and prom- 
ises, has not learned that doctrine of obedience which lies 
at the foundation of all government, human and divine. 
God has given to the parent the right to the obedience of 
his children, and the power to enforce it. That parent 
has failed in his duty who has not trained his child, not 
only to love him, but to obey him, in the strict sense of 
the word, that is to yield his will to the will of a superior, 
from a sense of appointed subordination and rightful au- 
thority. This sense of subordination and of obedience to 
appointed and rightful authority, is of the very essence of 
civil government, and the place where it is to be first and 
chiefly learned is in the household. To teach this is a 
main end of the parental relation. The parent who fails 
to teach it, fails to give his child the first element of good 
citizenship, and leaves him often to be in after-years the 
victim of his own uncontrolled passions and tempers. The 
want of a proper exercise of parental authority is, in this 
age of the world, the most prolific source of those frightful 
disorders that pervade society, and that threaten to upturn 
the very foundations of all civil government. The feeling 
of reverence, the sense of a respect for authority, the con- 
sciousness of being in a state of subordination, the feeling 
of obligation to do a thing simply because it is com- 
manded by some one having a right to obedience — all 
these old-fashioned notions seem to be dying out of the 
minds of men. The popular cry is, Don't make your 
children fear you. Govern them by love. Conquer them 
by kindness. Treat them as Mr Rarey did his horses. 
T protest against the notion. It is a mistake of Mr. 



KAREY AS AN EDUCATOR. Ill 

Rarey's system, and it is not the true basis for government, 
whether of brutes or men. The doctrine may seem harsh 
in these dainty times. But, in my opinion, a certain de- 
gree of wholesome fear in the mind of a child towards its 
parent, is essential, and is perfectly compatible with the 
very highest love, I have never known more confiding, 
affectionate, and loving children, than those who not only 
regarded their parents as kind benefactors and sympathiz- 
ing friends, but who looked up to them with a certain de- 
gree of reverence. The fear spoken of in the Bible, as 
being cast out by perfect love, is quite a different emotion. 
It is rather a slavish fear, a feeling of dread and terror. 
It sees in its object not only power but hostility. It 
awakens not only dread but hate. The child's fear, on 
the contrary, sees power united with kindness. It obeys 
the one, it loves the other. It is the exact attitude of 
mind to which Mr. Rarey brought the horse that was sub- 
jected to his management. 



XXII. 

A BOARDING-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE. 

I HAVE often wished I had the descriptive power of the 
man who wrote " The Diary of a Physician." My ex- 
periences in another profession have not been wanting in in- 
cident, often of a curious and romantic kind, and sometimes 
almost startling. But the " Diary of a Schoolmaster," to 
be read with interest, requires something more than a good 
basis of facts. He who writes it must have, also, graphic 
and narrative powers — a special gift, of which nature has 
been sparing to me. I had one experience, however, many 
years ago, so remarkable in some of its features, that per- 
haps the bare facts, stated in the simplest form, without 
artifice or embellishment, will be found worthy of perusal. 
The youth who was the principal actor in the scene which 
I am about to describe, has been dead these many years, 
and I believe the family have nearly all died out. The 
only survivor that I knew anything of ten years ago was 
then blind, and ill of an incurable disease. There would, 
therefore, perhaps be no harm in giving the youth's real 
name ; but as the name is one widely known, and as it is 
always best to avoid unnecessary intrusion upon private 
affairs, I have concluded to use a fictitious name, both for 
the person referred to and for the place from which he 

112 



A BOARDING-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE. 113 

came. In other particulars the following incident is a 
simple narration of facts. 

At the time of which I am writing, I had a large board- 
ing-school for boys, at Princeton, New Jersey. Particular 
circumstances gave me, for several years, quite a run of 
patronage from a town in one of the Western States, which 
for convenience I shall call Tompkinsville. Among those 
Who applied for admission from this town were two 
brothers. Bob and Charlie Graham. Bob was only ten 
years old. Charlie was fourteen, and as mature as most 
boys at nineteen. Mature, I mean, not so much in his 
intellectual development, for in that respect he was rather 
behindhand, but in his passions, and in his habits of 
independent thought and action. 

I had many misgivings about the propriety of receiving 
these boys into the school. Most of those that I had al- 
ready from Tompkinsville were of the fire-eating class, 
whom it had taken all my skill as a disciplinarian to 
bring into subjection, and I did not know what might be 
the effect of adding to their number two such combustible 
youths as these Grahams were reputed to be. Tompkins- 
ville, indeed, had long been notorious for the fiery and 
lawless character of its inhabitants. While containing 
many most estimable families, where a generous and warm- 
hearted hospitality reigned supreme, yet no town, probably, 
in all the Western States witnessed annually a greater 
number of street-fights and other deeds of violence of the 
most desperate character. No family in Tompkinsville 
were more noted than the Grahams, on the one hand for 
the passionate warmth of their attachments, and on the 
10* 



114 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

other for the fierceness and violence of their resentments. 
Nothing was too much for them to do for you when their 
affections were touched. On the other hand, no law, hu- 
man or divine, seemed to restrain them when their blood 
was up. When roused by what they regarded as an insult, 
they were human tigers, no less in the quickness than in 
the desperate ferocity of their anger. The father once, in 
open court, in a sudden rage, actually strode over the. 
tables and heads of the lawyers, and seizing the presiding 
judge by the collar, dragged him from the bench and 
horsewhipped him in the presence of all his officials. 
Charlie himself, of whom I am writing, gave, about two 
years after leaving school, a similar demonstration of vio- 
lence. Hearing that a young man, who was a fellow-stu- 
dent of his in a law office, had done something insulting, 
Charlie drew up a formal written apology and presented 
it to the young man to sign, intending afterwards to post 
it. On the young man's refusing to sign the paper, Charlie 
drew a weapon of some kind and sprang upon him. The 
young man being several years older, and very large and 
powerful, had no difficulty in disarming his assailant, 
throwing him upon the floor and holding him there. 
While thus down upon his back, bound hand and foot, 
and completely at the mercy of his antagonist, Charlie 
still demanded, as fiercely as ever, the signing of the 
" apology," giving the young man, as the only alternative, 
either to kill him or to be killed. " If you let me up 
alive, I will shoot you at sight, as sure as my name is 
Charles Graham." Knowing the desperate character of 
the family, and feeling too well assured of his own social 



A BOARDING-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE. 115 

position to care for any effect the signing of such a paper 
might have, the young man courageously let the ruffian 
up and signed the apology. Two days after, Charlie came 
back to the office, thoroughly mortified and penitent for 
his outrage, voluntarily gave up the paper, and apolo- 
gized in the amplest manner for his folly. 

I might enumerate other instances by the score, were it 
necessary, to show the character of the boy with whom I 
had to deal. But these are probably sufficient. His pas- 
sions were as quick as gunpowder, and as indiscriminate. 
Had I known all that I afterwards knew in regard to his 
disposition and his antecedents, I certainly would not have 
undertaken the charge of his education. 

The Grahams had been with me nearly a year without 
the occurrence of anything to attract attention or call for 
discipline. The school had considerable reputation among 
the people of Tompkinsville for the strictness of its disci- 
pline. Though the relations between the pupils and my- 
self were for the most part thoroughly kind and friendly, 
yet it was well understood by every boy who entered 
school that the will of the Principal was supreme. Mr. 
Graham had probably brought his boys to the school for 
that very reason. The routine of obedience had been so 
thoroughly established, that his boys, he thought, would 
submit through mere force of example. Bob was too 
young to give any uneasiness. He fell, of course, into 
many of the peccadilloes of boys of his age, and received, 
without demur, the treatment of a little boy. Charlie, 
for a long time, was almost a model of propriety. He 
was diligent in his studies, and observed the rules of the 



116 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

school with scrupulous care. He was fair, almost girlish, 
in appearance, and gentle in his speech. No one, merely 
observing the quiet, modest boy, going about his usual 
routine of duty, without noise or turbulence, would have 
dreamed of the sleeping volcano that lay beneath this 
placid exterior. 

About the middle of the second term I began to notice 
in Charlie symptoms that I did not like. The harness 
evidently chafed him somewhere, and there was no telling 
when he might kick out of the traces. The crisis at length 
came. One morning, when the boys were in the wash- 
room, under the charge of the senior teacher, Charlie, with 
what precise provocation I could never ascertain, drew 
back his basin of water and threw it full into the teacher's 
face. 

Here was a case. We were about to have an explosion. 
Evidently the young fire-eater's blood was up. He was 
bent on having " a scene ; " and, while his hand was in, 
he would quite likely make up for all the long months of 
peaceful inaction. All the tiger within him stood revealed. 

The matter was reported to me of course. After some 
little thought, my plan was chosen. Not a word was said 
on the subject for several hours. Meals, play-time, study- 
hours, lessons, everything went on as usual. At length, 
about eleven o'clock, Charlie was summoned, not to the 
principal's desk, in the public school-room, but to my 
private office, in a remote part of the premises. As he 
entered the quiet apartment, it was evident that the inter- 
vening hours of reflection had not been lost upon him. 
He was pretty sure, of course, that I had sent for him in 



A BOARDING-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE. 117 

consequence of the occurrence of the morning. Still he 
was not certain. Not a word had been uttered in school 
on the subject — no allusion to it even. Altogether there 
was something about the afiair that mystified him. 

The following brief dialogue ensued. 

'' Where are your skates, Charlie?" 

" In my box in the play-room, sir." 

" Where is your sled ?" 

" That is hanging up in the outer shed." 

" Where is your fishing-line and your ball ? " 

" They are in the play-room.''' 

" I wish you would get these and all your other play- 
things together before dinner. Peter (this was the head 
waiter) has collected your boots and shoes, and Sarah (the 
seamstress) has got your clothes together and packed your 
trunks. I have made out your accounts, and will be ready 
to send you home to your father by the afternoon train. 
You may help Bob also to collect his playthings ; he has 
not done anything wrong, but he is so young I think your 
father would not like to have him here alone so far from 
home." 

All this was said in a tone as utterly emotionless as I 
would have used if asking him whether he would be 
helped to beef or lamb at table. 

Charlie was taken aback. If I had attempted to chas- 
tise him, if I had even used towards him the language 
of invective or reproach, he could have met the case. 
But here was an issue which he had never contemplated. 
After a moment of blank amazement, he said : 

" Mr. H., I don't want to go home thus. It will grieve 



118 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

my father, and it will be a lasting stigma to me in Tomp- 
kinsville, where it is counted an honor to belong to this 
school. I know I have done wrong, but can't you inflict 
some other punishment ? I will submit to anything rather 
than be sent home in this way. Put me in ' exile ' and at 
the ' side-table,' for three days, or any time you please ! " 

This was an extreme penalty, sometimes used in school 
for very grave oiFences. The boy who was subject to it 
was obliged to stand at a table by himself in the dining- 
room and eat bread and water, while the other boys and 
their teachers were at their meals. Besides this, during 
the continuance of the penalty the culprit was not allowed 
to go upon the play-ground, or to speak to any one, nor 
was any one allowed to speak to him, under the penalty 
of being himself similarly punished. The punishment 
was, of course, a severe one in itself, and was very morti- 
fying to a boy of high spirit. It was only resorted to in 
extreme cases, and was limited to one day. Charlie begged 
that I would " exile " and " side-table " him for a week, 
if I pleased ; only not send him home thus. 

" No, Charlie ; I am not sure that your father would 
approve of your being thus publicly disgraced before the 
school and the family, nor am I myself sure that it would 
be right in the case of a boy so far advanced towards man- 
hood as you are. In assuming the charge of you, I never 
contemplated anything in our intercourse but such as 
occurs between gentlemen. Since I have been mistaken 
in my estimate of you, let our intercourse cease. It would 
not alter your character to subject you to a humiliating 
punishment before the assembled school. If it were your 



A BOARDING-SCHOOL EXPERIENCE. 119 

brother Bob, the case would be different. But you are 
almost a man. You have been treated here, as at home, 
with the consideration due to a young gentleman. I would 
myself revolt at seeing one of your years and standing 
treated as you request me to treat you. I cannot do it. 
You must go home." 

" Oh, no ! no ! Do not send me home ! Do anything 
else. I will submit to any punishment you please. Flog 
me ; please, flog me ! " 

" Flog you ! Never ! I have no scruples, as you know, 
on the subject of corporal punishment, for I often chastise 
the smaller boys ; but boys as old and mature as you are 
have sense enough to be governed by other considerations 
than fear, and especially fear of the rod. If they have 
not, I want nothing to do with them." 

" Oh ! Mr. H., won't you please to flog me ? " 

And the boy actually went down on his knees and 
begged me to thrash him. He, Charlie Graham, whose veins 
ran fire, who, six hours before, would have leaped at my 
throat had I so much as raised my finger at him, was now 
begging me, as a special boon, to give him a whipping ! I 
could hardly believe my senses. Yet there was no doubt 
of the boy's sincerity, or of his earnestness. So, to give 
me time to reflect as to what should be done, I finally said, 
" Charlie, I will think of what you have asked, and let 
you know at three o'clock." 

Three o'clock came, and Charlie again made his appear- 
ance. 

"Do you still wish me to whip you?" 

" I do. I will make any apology you think proper to 



120 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

the teacher whom I insulted, and I will be most thankful 
to you to chastise me for the offence." 
" Please to take off your coat." 

When the painful affair was over, I gave him my hand 
cordially and frankly, and said, " Charlie, you have honor- 
ably and courageously atoned for a grievous fault, and I 
assure you, I restore you not only to your position in 
school, but to my respect and confidence." 

I never had any further difficulty with Charlie Graham. 
Years afterwards, when I met his father at the Springs, 
he could hardly contain his amazement when I told him 
that I had once flogged his oldest son Charlie, at his own 
particular request. It was, I suppose, the first and last 
time the hand of correction was ever laid on him. 



XXIII. 

PHRENOLOGY. 

TN the previous chapter I gave a leaf from my experi- 
-■- enee of life in a boarding-school. I propose now to 
give another leaf from the same book. The incident 
about to be narrated, however, is not given as an illustra- 
tion of boarding-school life, but merely because it hap- 
pened at school. It might have happened elsewhere, 
though the circumstances on that occasion were particularly 
favorable for giving to it a curious point. 

While I was at the head of the Edgehill school, at 
Princeton, N. J., a stranger called one day and announced 

himself as Prof . The name is one almost as well 

known in the history of Phrenological science as that of 
Prof. Combe. He said he was about to give a lecture in 
Princeton on the subject of Phrenology, and as he was an 
entire stranger to myself and to all the pupils and teachers 
in the school, he thought it would be a good opportunity 
for making an interesting and critical experiment. He pro- 
posed, therefore, with my consent, to spend an hour, in 
presence of the school, in examining the heads of any of 
the boys that I might call up for that purpose. From the 
very intimate relations existing in a boarding-school, the 

characters of the boys would be well known to me and to 
11 121 



122 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

their companions and teachers, and we would have there- 
fore the means of knowing how far he succeeded in his 
experiment. 

Thinking that an hour spent in this way would not be 
misspent, that it would at least give some variety to the 
monotonous routine of study and lessons, and, let me add, 
being not entirely without curiosity as to the result, I con- 
sented to his proposition, and called the school together iii 
the large assembly-room. All the boys being in their seats, 
together with the teachers and the ladies of the household, 
I stated briefly the object of their assembling and the 
method in which it was proposed to proceed with the experi- 
ment. They were to observe entire silence, and to give no 
indication, by word or look, so far as they could help it, 
to show whether the Professor was hitting the mark or 
not, as he read off to them the characters of their compan- 
ions. The boys took to the idea at once, and the excite- 
ment very soon was at fever-heat. 

Placing a chair upon the platform, in full view of the 
school, and the Professor alongside of it, I called up 

Boy No. 1. — This happened to be a lad about fourteen, 
from the interior of Alabama. He was the most athletic 
boy in school. " Full big he was of brawn and eke of 
bones," as Chaucer says, in his picture of the Miller. 
He could beat any boy in school in wrestling, and no doubt 
could flog any of them in a fist-fight, though on this point 
I speak only from conjecture, as this part of boys' amuse- 
ments is not always as well known to their teachers as it 
is to the boys themselves. The Professor, after some little 
juanipulation of the cranium, read off the boy's character 



PHRENOLOGY. 123 

with tolerable accuracy. Any one, however, with a grain 
of observation, who had seen the boy stalking up to the 
platform, with bold, almost defiant air, or had noticed his 
bull-neck, hard fist, and swaggering gait, could not have 
had much difficulty in guessing what kind of a boy he 
was, without resort to his bumps for information. It was 
written in unmistakable characters all over his physical 
conformation, from his head to his heels. 

I noticed, however, that while the Professor's fingers 
were busy with the boy's cranium, his eyes were not less 
busy with the faces of his youthful auditors. Whenever 
his interpretation of any bump was a palpable hit, his 
success could be all too plainly read in the upturned faces 
before him. If the success was very marked and decisive, 
the youngsters were entirely unable to restrain their ex- 
pressions of surprise and admiration. It was very evident, 
from his method of procedure, that he was guided by these 
expressions, quite as much as by his fingering of the 
bumps. He would first mention lightly some trait of 
character. If it attracted no particular attention, he 
would quietly fall on to something else. But if the an- 
nouncement seemed to create a little breeze, showing that 
he had made a hit, he would then dwell upon the point, 
and intensify his expressions, until, in some instances, the 
school was in quite an uproar of satisfaction. 

Possibly there was a spice of malice in what followed. 
At all events, it seemed to me that that was a kind of 
game at which two could play, and if, under the circum- 
stances, he chose to palm off for knowledge gained by the 
fingers, what he was really getting by means of his eyes 



124 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

and ears, there would be no great crime in punishing him 
a little for his impertinence. So, in calling the following 
boys, I selected some who were notorious in school for 
certain marked traits, but whose general appearance and 
manner gave no indication of their mental peculiarities ; 
and I questioned the Professor, in regard to each boy, 
after a method suited to the case. 

Boy No. 2 was a youth of moderate abilities, and was, 
in all things, save one, just like other boys. But, in one 
matter, he had a peculiarity about which there could be 
no mistake. That was in the matter of music. So, after 
questioning the Professor about various indifferent points, 
moral and intellectual, such as reverence, combativeness, 
secretiveness, language, ideality, etc., I asked incidentally 
something also about tune and music. The answer was such 
as might be safely given in regard to ninety-nine out of 
every hundred persons — some vague, indefinite epithet 
that would apply to almost any one. But, seeing a little 
sparkle in the eyes before him, the gentleman manip- 
ulated the cranium again, and then expressed himself 
somewhat more strongly. As his expressions increased in 
strength, the excitement of the audience increased, until 
he was quite lost in hyperbole, as they were in uproar. 
He even went into particulars. " Now," said he, " though 
I never saw this boy before, yet I venture to say that his 
ear for music is so quick that he can pick up almost any 
tune by once hearing it played or whistled in the street." 
[A general rustle through the school, boys winking and 
giving knowing looks one to another.] I dare say he 
could now sing or whistle a hundred tunes from memory. 



PHRENOLOGY* 125 

[More knowing looks.] Possibly he may never make a 
very accurate performer, on account of the very ease with 
which he picks up a tune. He learns a tune so easily 
by the ear, that he will not submit to the drudgery of 
studying it scientifically." 

" You think, then, Professor, that the boy has decided 
indications of musical talent?" 

" Undoubtedly. He has musical talents of a very high 
order [suppressed shouts] amounting almost to genius ! " 

The fact was, poor Charlie was the butt of the whole 
school, on account of his utter inability to learn the first 
elements of either the art or the science of music. He 
could neither sing, whistle, nor play. He could hardly 
tell "Old Hundred" from "Yankee Doodle." Although 
he had been taking music-lessons for two years, he could 
not rise and fall through the eight notes, to save his neck. 
His attempts to do so were a sort of indiscriminate goo, goo, 
goo, like that of an infant ; and the excitement among the 
boys, which the Professor had mistaken for applause and 
admiration, grew out of their astonishment. They were 
simply laughing at him. 

Boy No. 3 was a youth over fourteen yeare old, regularly 

and symmetrically formed in face, features, and person. 

There was nothing in his make or bearing to indicate any 

marked peculiarity. Yet he had a peculiarity as marked 

as that of the preceding. He was singularly deficient in 

the capacity for mathematical studies. He was studying 

English grammar, geography, and Latin, and got along in 

these branches about as well as the majority of his class. 

But when it came to the science of numbers, he seemed to 
11* 



126 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

stick fast. Neither I nor any of my teachers had been 
able to get him beyond Long Division. It was as clear a 
case as I have ever known of natural deficiency in that 
department of the mental constitution. Yet this boy was 
declared by the manipulator to have a decided talent for 
mathematics. 

Boy No. 4 was my crack mathematician. He was really 
in mathematics what our manipulator had made out No. 2 
to be in music. His quickness in the perception of mathe- 
matical truth was wonderful. Besides this natural readi- 
ness in everything pertaining to the science of quantity 
and the relations of numbers, he had received a good 
mathematical training, and he was in this department 
far in advance of his years. Whenever we had a public 
exhibition, George was our show-card. The rapidity with 
which he would fill the blackboard, in solving difiicult 
problems in quadratics, was almost bewildering. It was 
not every teacher even that could follow him in his quick 
but exact evolutions of complex algebraical formulae. In 
Greek and Latin he hardly attained to mediocrity, being 
always behind his class, while in mathematics he was 
superior, not only to every boy in school, but to any boy 
of the same age that I have ever had in any school. But 
this boy received from the Professor only a second or third- 
rate rank for mathematical indications, while highly 
praised for linguistics, in which he was decidedly inferior. 

The fact was, I saw that the gentleman was trying to 
read me, as well as the more youthful part of his audience ; 
and so, in questioning him about this boy, I was malicious 
enough to be very minute and specific in my inquiries 



PHRENOl^OGY. 127 

about any indications of a talent for language, while the 
questions about mathematics were propounded just like 
those about half a dozen other points ; that is, with no 
special stress or emphasis, but just enough to draw from 
the Professor a clear and distinct expression of opinion. 

Boy No. 5 was perhaps the most critical case of all, yet 
the one most difficult to describe. He was good, and 
about equally good, in all his studies. He stood head in 
almost every class. He wa^ so uniformly good that his 
character became monotonous, and would have been in- 
sipid, but for the manly vigor that marked all his perform- 
ances. His moral were like his mental traits. He was 
indeed our model boy. In two years he had not had one 
demerit mark. He was on all sides rounded and completo 
— totus teres atque rotundus. The uniformity of his good- 
ness was sometimes a source of anxiety to me. There was 
danger of his growing up with a self-satisfied, pharisaical 
spirit. 

Thus far, however, I have not named the feature which I 
regarded as the critical one, and which had led me to 
select him as one of the subjects for examination. Model 
boys are to be found in all schools. But this boy had a 
power of reticence which was to me a continual study, and 
it was this feature in his character that I wanted to bring 
out in the examination. He was not a sneak. There was 
nothing sly about him. His conduct wa.s open and above- 
board. What he did was patent to all. But what he 
thought, or how he felt, no one knew. Not Grant him- 
self could more perfectly keep his own counsel. If a new 
rule was promulgated, Joseph obeyed it to the letter. But 



128 l^ THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

whether it was agreeable or disagreeable to him, no teacher 
could ever find out. Nor was his obedience of that tame, 
passive sort which comes from indifference and lack of 
spirit. We all knew him to be resolute, and to be pos- 
sessed of strong passions. But his power of self-restraint 
was equal to his power of reticence. He had, indeed, in a 
very marked degree, qualities which you look for only in 
those who have had a long schooling in the stern realities 
of life, and which you find rarely even then. He was as 
self-poised as a man of fifty, with not a particle of that 
easy impulsiveness so nearly universal at his age. 

None of the gentleman^s performances surprised me so 
much as the character which he assigned to this boy, and 
all the more because something of the boy's self-conti- 
nence and reserve was w^ritten upon his face and manner. 
He was represented by the Professor, in general terms, as 
having a free and easy, rollicking sort of disposition — not 
being really worse than his companions, though probably 
having the reputation of being so. ' If he got into more 
scrapes than the others [Joseph was never in a scrape in 
his life], it was more owing to his natural impulsiveness 
than to anything inherently bad in him. And then, when 
he did get into a scrape, he had no faculty for concealing 
it. His organ of secretiveness was unusually small. The 
boys would hardly admit him to a partnership in their 
plans of mischief, so sure was he inadvertently to let the 
cat out of the bag,' etc., etc. 

Boy No. 6 was the weakest boy, mentally, that we had 
in school. He was barely able to take care of himself. 
Some of his mistakes and blunders were so ridiculouSj that 



PHRENOLOGY. 129 

they were handed down among the traditionary jokes of 
the school, and I am afraid even at this day to repeat 
them, lest they may be recognized. If the manipulator 
had had the cranium of Daniel Webster under his fingers, 
he could not have drawn a mental character more marked 
by every trait that belongs to intellectual greatness of the 
highest order. Finding that he was making a decided im- 
pression upon his young hearers, the Professor continued 
to pile up qualities and powers, until the scene became 
almost too much for the most practised gravity. 

The examinations occupied an hour, and I made copious 
notes of the whole, writing down, as nearly as I could, the 
exact expressions used by the operator. The report which 
I have now given of it is as nearly literal as it is safe to 
make it. 

When the Professor was through, and was about to 
leave, he asked me privately to tell him how far he had 
succeeded in his experiments. Not wishing to say any- 
thing disagreeable, I evaded the question to the best of 
my ability, answering with some vague generalities, but 
indicating sufficiently that it was not agreeable to be more 
explicit. He pressed me, however, to tell him candidly 
and explicitly whether he had succeeded, and how far. I 
then told him frankly that he had failed point-blank in 
every case. " Ah," said he, " you are skeptical." " No, 
sir," said I, "skepticism implies doubt, and I have 
no longer any doubts on the subject. My skepticism is 
entirely removed ! " 



XXIV. 

NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

rpHE term Normal School is an imfortuDate misnomer, 
-^ and its general adoption has led to much confusion 
of ideas. The word " Normal," from the Latin norma, a 
rule or pattern to work by, does not differ essentially from 
" Model." A Normal School, according to the meaning 
of the word, would be a pattern school, an institution 
which could be held up for imitation, to be copied by 
other schools of the same grade. But this meaning of 
the word is not what we mean by the thing. When we 
mean a school to be copied or imitated, we call it a Model 
School. Here the name and the thing agree. The name 
explains the thing. It is very different when we speak of 
a Normal School. To the uninitiated, the term either 
conveys no meaning at all ; or, if your hearer is a man of 
letters, it conveys to him an idea which you have at once 
to explain away. You have to tell him, in effect, that a 
Normal School is not a Normal School, and then that it 
is something else, which the word does not in the least 
describe. 

What then do we mean by a Normal School ? What is 
the thing which we have called by this unfortunate name? 

A Normal School is a seminary for the professional 
]30 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 131 

education of teachers. It is an institution m which those 
who wish to become teachers learn how to do their work ; 
in which they learn, not reading, but how to teach reading ; 
not penmanship, but how to teach penmanship ; not gram- 
mar, but how to teach grammar ; not geography, but how 
to teach geography; not arithmetic, but how to teach 
arithmetic. The idea which lies at the basis of such an 
institute, is that knowing a thing, and knowing how to 
teach that thing to others, are distinguishable and very 
different facts. The knowledge of the subjects to be taught, 
may be gained at any school. In order to give to the 
Teachers' Seminary its full power and efficiency, it were 
greatly to be desired that the subjects themselves, as mere 
matters of knowledge, should be first learned elsewhere, 
before entering the Teachers' School. This latter would 
then have to do only with its own special function, that of 
showing its matriculants how to use these materials in the 
process of teaching. Unfortunately, we have not yet 
made such progress in popular education as to be able to 
separate these two functions to the extent that is desirable. 
Many of those who attend a Teachers' Seminary, come to 
it lamentably ignorant of the common brandies of knowl- 
edge. They have consequently first to study these branches 
in the Normal School, as they would study them in any 
other school. That is, they have first to learn the facts 
as matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and 
science of teaching these facts to others. Instead of 
coming with their brick and mortar ready prepared, that 
they may be instructed in the use of the trowel and the 
plumb-line, they have to make tlieir biick and mix tlicir 



132 IN THE SCH(JOL-KOOM. 

mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubt- 
edly a drawback and a misfortune. But it cannot be 
helped at present. All we can do is to define clearly the 
true idea of the Teachers' School, and then to work to- 
wards it as fast and as far as we can. 

A Normal School is essentially unlike any other school. 
It has been compared indeed to those professional schools 
which are for the study of law, divinity, medicine, minings 
engineering, and so forth. The Normal School, it is true, 
is like these schools in one respect. It is established with 
reference to the wants of a particular profession. It is a 
professional school. But those schools have for their main 
object the communication of some particular branch of 
science. They teach law, divinity, medicine, mining, or 
engineering. They aim to make lawyers, divines, physi- 
cians, minei-s, engineers, not teachers of these branches. 
The Professor in the Law School aims, not to make Pro- 
fessors of law, but lawyers. The medical Professor aims, 
not to make medical lecturers, but practitioners. To render 
these institutions analogous to the Teachers' Seminary, 
their pupils should first study law, medicine, engineering, 
and so forth, and then sit at the feet of their Gamaliels to 
be initiated into the secrets of the Professorial chair, that 
they may in turn become Professors of those branches to 
classes of their own. Nor would such a plan, if it were 
possible, be altogether without its value. It surely needs 
no demonstration to prove, that in the highest departments, 
no less than in the lowest, something more than knowledge 
is needed in order to teach. An understanding of how to 
communicate one's knowledge, and practical skill in doing 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 133 

it, are as necessary in teaching theology, metaphysics, lan^ 
giiages, infinitesimal analysis, or chemistry, as they are in 
teaching the alphabet. If there are bunglers, who know 
not how to go to work to teach a child its letters, or to 
open its young mind and heart to the reception of truth, 
whose school-rooms are places where the young mind and 
heart are in a state, either of perpetual torpor, or of per- 
petual nightmare, have these bunglers no analogues in the 
men of ponderous erudition that sometimes fill the Pro- 
fessor's chair ? Have we no examples, in our highest semi- 
naries of learning, of men very eminent in scientific at- 
tainments, who have not in themselves the first elements 
of a teacher ? who impart to their students no quickening 
impulse? whose vast and towering knowledge may make 
them perhaps a grand feature in their College, attracting 
to it all eyes, but whose intellectual treasures, for all the 
practical wants of the students, are of no more use, than 
are the swathed and buried mummies in the pyramid of 
Cheops ! 

A Teachers' Seminary, if it were complete, would in- 
clude in its curriculum of study the entire cycle of human 
knowledge, so far as it is taught by schools. Our teachers 
of mathematics and of logic, of law and of medicine, need 
indeed a knowledge of the branches which they are to 
teach, and for this knowledge they do not need a Teachers' 
Seminary. But they need something more than this 
knowledge. Besides being men of erudition, they need to 
be teachers, no less than the humbler members of the pro- 
fession, who have only to teach the alphabet and the mul- 
tiplication table ; and there is in all teaching, high or low, 
12 



134 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

something that is common to them all — an art and a skill 
which is different from the mere knowledge of the sub- 
jects; which is not necessarily learned in learning the 
subjects ; which requires special, superadded gifts, and 
distinct study and training. There is, according to my 
observation, as great a lack of this special skill in the 
higher seminaries of learning, as in the lower seminaries. 
Were it possible to have a Normal School, not which 
should undertake to teach the entire encyclopaedia of the 
sciences, but which, limiting itself to its one main function 
of developing the art and mystery of communicating 
knowledge, should turn out College Professors, and even 
Divinity, Law, and Medical Professors, — men who were 
really skilful teachers, — it would work a change in those 
venerable institutions as marked and decisive as that which 
it is now effecting in the common schools. Of course, no 
such scheme is possible ; certainly, none such is contem- 
plated. But I am very sure I shall not be considered 
calumnious, when I express the conviction, that there are 
learned and eminent occupants of Professors' chairs, who 
might find great benefit in an occasional visit to a good 
Normal School, or even to the class-room of a teacher 
trained in a Normal School. I certainly have seen, in 
the very lowest department of the common school, a style 
of teaching, which, for a wise and intelligent comprehen- 
sion of its object, and for its quickening power upon the 
intellect and conscience, would compare favorably with 
the very best teaching I have ever seen in a College or 
University. 

I come back, then, to tiie point from which I set out, 



NOKMAL SCHOOLS. 135 

namely, that a Normal School, or Teachers' Seminary, 
differs essentially from every other kind of school. It 
aims to give the knowledge and skill that are needed alike 
in all schools. To make the point a little plainer, let me 
restate, with what clearness I can, some of the elementary 
truths and facts which lie at the foundation of the whole 
subject. Though to many of my readers it may be going 
over a beaten track, it may not be so to all ; and we all 
do well, even in regard to known and admitted truths, to 
bring them occasionally afresh to the mind. 

As it has been already said, a man may know a thing 
perfectly, and yet not be able to teach it. Of course, a 
man cannot teach what he does not know. He must first 
have the knowledge. But the mere possession of knowl- 
edge does not make one a teacher, any more than the pos- 
session of powder and shot makes him a marksman, or the 
possession of a rod and line makes him an angler. The 
most learned men are often unfortunately the very men 
who have least capacity for communicating what they 
know. Nor is this incapacity confined to those versed in 
book knowledge. It is common to every class of men, 
and to every kind of knowledge. Let me give an exam- 
ple. The fact about to be stated, was communicated to 
me by a gentleman of eminent commercial standing in 
Philadelphia, at that time the President of one of its 
leading banks. The fact occurred in his own personal ex- 
perience. He was, at the time of its occurrence, largely 
engaged in the cloth trade. His faculties of mind and 
body, and particularly his sense of touch, had been so 
trained in this business, that in going rapidly over an in- 



136 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

voice of cloth, as his eye and hand passed in quick suc- 
cession from piece to piece, in the most miscellaneous as- 
sortment, he could tell instantly the value of each, with a 
degree of precision, and a certainty of knowledge, hardly 
credible. A single glance of the eye, a single touch, tran- 
sient as thought, gave the result. His own knowledge of 
the subject, in short, was perfect, and it was rapidly win- 
ning him a fortune. Yet when undertaking to explain to a 
younger and less experienced member of the craft, whom 
he wished to befriend, by what process he arrived at his 
judgment, in other words, to teach what he knew, he found 
himself utterly at a loss. His thoughts had never run in 

that direction. "Oh!" said he, "you have only to 

look at the cloth, and — and — to run your fingers over it, 
— thus. You will perceive at once the difference between 
one piece and another." It seems never to have occurred 
to him that another man's sensations and perceptions 
might in the same circumstances be quite different from 
his, and that in order to communicate his knowledge to 
one uninitiated, he must pause to analyze it ; he must sep- 
arate, classify, and name those several qualities of the 
cloth of which his senses took cognizance ; he must then 
ascertain how far his interrogator perceived by his senses 
the same qualities which he himself did, and thus gradu- 
ally get on common ground with him. 

Let the receiving-teller of a bank be called upon to 
explain how it is that he knows at a glance a counterfeit 
bill from a genuine one, and in nine cases out of ten he 
will succeed no better than the cloth merchant did. Know- 
ing and communicating what we know, doing and explain- 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 137 

ing what we do, are distinct, separable, and usually very- 
different processes. 

Similar illustrations might be drawn from artists, and 
from men of original genius in almost every profession, 
who can seldom give any intelligible account of how they 
achieve their results. The mental habits best suited for 
achievement are rarely those best suited for teaching. 
Marlborough, so celebrated for his military combinations, 
could never give any intelligible account of his plans. 
He had arrived at his conclusions with unerring certainty, 
but he was so little accustomed to observing his own men- 
tal processes, that he utterly failed in attempting to make 
them plain to others. He saw the points himself with 
perfect clearness, but he had no power to make others see 
them. To all objections to his plans, he could only say, 
" Silly, silly, that 's silly." It was much the same with 
Cromwell. It is so with most men who are distinguished 
for action and achievement. Patrick Henry would doubt- 
less have made but a third-rate teacher of elocution, and 
old Homer but an indifferent lecturer on the art of 
poetry. 

To acquire knowledge ourselves, then, and to put others 
in possession of what we have acquired, are not only dis- 
tinct intellectual processes, but they are quite unlike. In 
the former case, the faculties merely go out towards the 
objects to be known, as in the case of the cloth merchant 
passing his eye and finger over the bales of cloth. But in 
the case of one attempting to teach, several additional 
processes are needed, besides that of collecting knowledge. 

He must turn his thoughts inward, so as to arrange and 
12* 



138 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

cUissify properly the contents of his intellectual storehouse. 
He must then examine his own mind, his intellectual 
machinery, so as to understand exactly how the knowledge 
came in upon himself. He must lastly study the minds 
of his pupils, so as to know through what channels the 
knowledge may best reach them. The teacher may not 
always be aware that he does all these things, that is, he 
may not always have a theory of his own art. But the 
art itself he must have. He must first get the knowledge 
of the things to be taught ; he must secondly study his 
knowledge; he must thirdly study himself ; he must lastly 
study his pupil. He is a teacher at all only so far as he 
does at least these four things. 

In a Normal School, as before said, the knowledge of 
the subject is presupposed. The object of the Normal 
School is, not so much to make arithmeticians and gram- 
marians, for instance, as to make teachers of arithmetic 
and grammar. This teaching faculty is a thing by itself, 
and quite apart from the subject matter to be taught. It 
underlies every branch of knowledge, and every trade and 
profession. The theologian, the mathematician, the lin- 
guist, the learned professor, no less than the teacher of the 
primary school, or of the Sabbath-school, all need this 
supplementary knowledge and skill, in which consists the 
very essence of teaching. This knowledge of how to teach 
is not acquired by merely studying the subject to be taught. 
It is a K^tudy by itself. A man may read familiarly the 
Mechanique Celeste, and yet not know how to teach the 
multiplication table. He may read Arabic or Sanskrit, 
and not know how to teach a child the alphabet of his 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 139 

mother tongue. The Sabbath-school teacher may dip 
deep into biblical lore, he may ransack the commentaries, 
and may become, as many Sabbath-school teachers are, 
truly learned in Bible knowledge, and yet be utterly in- 
competent to teach a class of children. He can no more 
hit the wandering attention, or make a lodgment of his 
knowledge in the minds of his youthful auditory, than the 
mere unskilled possessor of a fowling-piece can hit a bird 
upon the wing. 

The art of teaching is the one indispensable qualifica- 
tion of the teacher. Without this, whatever else he may 
be, he is no teacher. How may this art be acquired ? In 
the first place, many persons pick it up, just as they pick 
up a great many other arts and trades, — in a hap-hazard 
sort of way. They have some natural aptitude for it, and 
they grope their way along, by guess and by instinct, and 
through many failures, until they become good teachers, 
they hardly know how. To rescue the art from this con- 
dition of uncertainty and chance, is the object of the 
Normal School. In such a school, the main object of the 
pupil is to learn how to make others know what he him- 
self knows. The whole current of his thoughts and 
studies is turned into this channel. Studying how to 
teach, with an experimental class to practise on, forms the 
constant topic of his meditations. It is surprising how 
rapidly, under such conditions, the faculty of teaching is 
developed ; how fertile the mind becomes in devising prac- 
tical expedients, when once the attention is roused and 
fixed upon the precise object to be attained, and the idea 
of what teaching really is, fairly has possession of the 



140 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

mind. For this purpose every well-ordered Normal School 
has, in connection with it, as a part of its organization, a 
Model School, to serve the double purpose of a school of 
observation and practice. 

Thus, after these pupil-teachers are once familiar with 
the branches to be taught, and after they have become 
acquainted with the theory of teaching, as a science, it is 
surprising how soon, with even a little of this practice- 
teaching, they acquire the art. If the faculty of teaching 
is in them at all, a very few experimental lessons, under 
the eye of an experienced teacher, will develop it. 

The fact of possessing within one's self this gift, or power 
of teaching, sometimes breaks upon the possessor himself 
with all the force of a surprising and most delightful dis- 
covery. The good teacher does not indeed stop here. He 
goes on to improve in his art, as long as he lives. But his 
greatest single achievement is when he takes the first step, 
— when he first learns to teach at all. The pupil of a 
Normal School gains there a start and an imjoulse, which 
carry him forward the rest of his life. A very little judi- 
cious experimental training redeems hundreds of candi- 
dates from utter and hopeless incompetency, and converts 
for them an awkward and painful drudgery into keen, 
hopeful and productive labor. 



XXV. 

PRACTICE-TEACHING. 

ONE feature of a Normal School which distinguishes it 
especially from other schools, is the opportunity given 
to its matriculants for practising their art under the guid- 
ance and criticism of an experienced teacher. This prac- 
tice-teaching is done in a Model School, maintained for 
this purpose in connection with the main school. Such is 
the theory. 

But serious difficulties are encountered in carrying the 
plan into practical effect, and these difficulties are so great 
as in some instances to have led to the entire abandon- 
ment of the plan, while very rarely have the conductors 
of Normal schools been able to realize results in this mat- 
ter commensurate with their wishes or with their views of 
what was desirable and right. 

Some of the difficulties are the following: Parents 
who send their children to the Model School object to 
have their children taught to any considerable extent by 
mere pupil-teachers. The teachers of the Model School, 
having little or no acquaintance with the Normal pupils 
sent to teach under their supervision, do not feel that en- 
tire freedom in criticising the performance which is essen- 
tial to its success. The irregularities produced by these 

141 



142 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

practice-teachings have a tendency to impair the discipline 
of the classes in the Model School. 

For these and other reasons which I need not dwell 
upon, I at least have always been obliged to be some- 
what chary in regard to the amount of practice-teaching 
that was done in the institution under my care, and have 
never felt quite satisfied as to the result. At the beginning 
of the year 1867, I determined to try the plan of having 
a considerable portion of the practice-teaching done in 
the Normal School itself, the Model School still holding 
its place in the system as furnishing an unrivalled oppor- 
tunity for observation, and to some extent of practice 
also. The effect of thus extending the opportunity for 
practice by including the Normal School in its operations 
has been most happy. The pupils have attained a degree 
of freedom in the exercise which is working the most 
marked and decisive results. They enter into it with 
more zest than into any other exercise of the class, and 
derive from it in some instances as much benefit as from 
all their other exercises put together. 

Some detailed account of the method may perhaps be of 
interest to other laborers in the same field. The method 
is substantially the same as that followed in the Girls 
High and Normal School of Philadelphia, from which 
indeed I borrowed the idea. 

Once a week I make up a programme containing the 
names of those who are to teach during the following 
week, and the classes and lessons which they are severally 
to teach. The practice-pupils are thus enabled to prepare 
themselves fully for the exercise. It is an indispensable 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 143 

condition in all these exercises that the lesson be given 
without the use of the book. When a pupil enters a room 
to teach one of these assigned lessons, he is to bring with 
him only his crayon and pointer, and is expected to assume 
entire charge of the class, maintaining order, hearing the 
pupils recite, correcting their mistakes, illustrating the 
subject, if necessary, by diagrams or experiments, giving 
supplementary information drawn from other sources than 
the text-book, and acting in all respects as if he were the 
regular teacher. The regular teacher meanwhile sits by, 
observing in silence, and at the close of the day writes out 
a full and detailed criticism upon the performance in a 
book kept for this purpose, and gives the pupil an average 
for it, the maximum being 100. These criticisms, together 
with the teaching averages, are read next day by the 
Principal to the pupil in the presence of the class to 
which he belongs, with additional comments in regard to 
any principles of teaching that may be involved in the 
criticisms. 

An essential element of success in this scheme, is that 
the teachers should be thoroughly faithful in the work of 
criticism, and point out the errors and shortcomings of 
the young practitioners, not with harshness, but with un- 
sparing truthfulness and wise discrimination. Practice- 
teaching under such conditions cannot fail to have a pow- 
erful effect. The pupils are stimulated by it to put forth 
the very best efforts of which they are capable, and the 
talent which they often develop is a surprise equally to 
themselves and their teachers. 

I cannot better give an idea of this practice-teaching, 



144 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

and especially of the criticism which is its vitalizing prin- 
ciple, than by quoting a few of the actual criticisms made 
during the last year. I feel sure they will interest teachers 
and perhaps the public. 

In making these extracts, I suppress, of course, the 
names of the parties. 

NOTES ON PRACTICE-TEACHING. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She 

was animated and energetic in giving the vocal exercises, 
but she pitched her voice too high. The same shrill tone 
characterized the concert reading. Many of the criticisms 
given by pupils were not loud enough to be heard by the 
whole class. One of the ladies, in giving a sketch of 
Shakspeare, said "his principal works ivas 'Much Ado 
About Nothing,' 'Merchant of Venice,' etc.;" but the 

error passed unnoticed by pupils and teacher. Miss 

herself, said "Hamlet thought it wasn't Jmn." She 
marked the pupils too high, the worst readers in the class 
receiving 8 and 9. Teaching average 85. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in History. She 

was herself well prepared with the lesson, but she allowed 
the pupils too long a time to think and guess. A chronol- 
ogy lesson is apt to be dry and uninteresting ; and unless 
the teacher calls upon the pupils in rapid succession, thus 
keeping them wide awake, the interest will flag, and even 
good pupils will be inattentive. One of the pupils, after 
gaping two or three times, indulged in short naps during 
the recitation ; the teacher evidently did not see her. 
Miss .marked the pupils judiciously. Teaching aver- 
age 90. 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 145 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Arithmetic. She 

assisted the pupils too mucli. She did not require them 
to be accurate enough in answering questions ; otherwise 
she taught well, the subject being rather a difficult one. 
Miss marked the pupils judiciously. Teaching aver- 
age 85, 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Grammar. She 

began the recitation well, spoke in a loud and decided 
tone, and was well prepared with the lesson. She failed 
to keejD her class in order ; she allowed pupils to speak 
without being called upon, and all to criticise and ask 
questions at the same instant — thus she became confused 
and sought refuge behind her book. Teaching average 80. 

Miss — '■ — gave the C class a lesson in the Constitution 
of the United States. She was too quiet in conducting 
the recitation. The entire period was spent in repeating 
the mere words of the book ; but once or twice the lady- 
asked for the explanation of clauses, and then the answers 
given were neither full nor satisfactory, yet the lady ven- 
tured no comment of her own. Many practical questions 
might have been given by the teacher respecting the ex- 
ecutive departments, ambassadors, consuls, treaties, and 
so forth. The lesson contained many subjects of interest 
sufficient to occupy more than the allotted time. Teachers 
should call more frequently for definitions, and always 
take it for granted that their pupils are ignorant of the 
meaning of even the simplest words. I venture to assert 
that more than one third of the class left the room without 
knowing the diflference between a reprieve and a pardon. 
Teaching average 8Q. 
13 



146 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Arithmetic. She 

was v/ell prepared with the lesson, seemed to understand 
the subject fully, and readily answered questions proposed 
by pupils ; but she allowed too many pupils to speak at 
once, and did not pay enough attention to signs. One of 
the pupils began a sentence with a small letter, and 
Miss took no notice of it. Miss marked judi- 
ciously. Teaching average 88. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in the Constitution. 

She failed entirely in teaching. She became embarrassed, 
and soon lost the respect and confidence of the class. 
Pupils assumed all sorts of positions ; and one picked up 
a ruler and began fanning himself, but was not rebuked 
by the teacher. The lady, not familiar with the names 
of the scholars, made several mistakes, (perfectly excus- 
able) ; but, there being no sympathy between the teacher 
and the class, the pupils laughed immoderately, and 
seemed to enjoy the lady's embarrassment. The words of 
the book were repeated over and over again, without a 
word of explanation or comment, until the teacher, tired 
of the monotony, announced that the lesson was finished, 
and called upon me to fill up the remainder of the time. 
The lesson was one that needed thorough preparation on 

the part of the teacher, but Miss had merely studied 

the words and not the subject; when asked a very simple 
question by one of the pupils, she was completely non- 
plussed. Teaching average 50. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Map Drawing. 

She became somewhat confused in her work, and so did 
^ot distinctly enough give the points of criticism. I think 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 147 

she was not familiar enough with the map drawn to notice, 
with sufficient readiness, the great points of error in the 
work. Several of the pupils were allowed, in one or two 
cases, to speak at the same time. She marked well, using 
a good scale of markings. Teaching average 85. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Arithmetic. She 

was either very careless or had not prepared the proper 
lesson, as she gave pupils problems to solve that were not 
in the lesson ; in consequence of which some good pupils 
failed, as they had not ^prepared an advance lesson. She 
was too quiet, and spoke in so low a tone that many of 
the pupils did not hear her. The pupils were more ani- 
mated than the teacher. Miss marked some pupils 

too high, others too low, and in one instance did not mark 
at all. Teaching average 65. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in History. She 

was thoroughly prepared with the lesson, and did not con- 
fine herself to the mere words of the text-book. She 
asked many good general questions connected with the 
subject, thus compelling pupils to think ; and whenever 
the class failed to give the desired information, the lady 
very promptly gave it herself; she thus won the confidence 

of her pupils. Miss lacked animation and did not 

speak loud enough ; otherwise she did we.U. Teaching 
average 92. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Grammar. She 

has improved since teaching for me before, but she still 
lacks energy and decision. She gave the pupil who was 
reciting all her attention, thus allowing an opportunity to 
some (who took advantage of it) to assume lounging posi- 



148 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

tions, in which to await lazily for their turn to recite. 

Some remained wide awake, and embarrassed Miss , 

by speaking at any time, even interrupting her in the 
middle of a sentence, to ask questions. Teaching aver- 
age 87. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Grammar. She 

taught well. She spoke in 'that decided tone which 
conveys a conviction of truth to pupils, and by so doin-g 
gained their confidence. She used the blackboards to 
advantage, and thoroughly inspected and criticised all 
writings that she had required to be put upon the boards. 
The facts she taught were correct, except one, which was, 
that " is ashamed " was a verb in the passive voice ; in 
this she was corrected by a number of the class. Teaching 
average 93. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She 

failed in teaching. The pupils read badly, and many errors 
were made, but there were no criticisms. The lady spoke 
in a very low tone, and seemed to be afraid of the class. 
She did not read a single line for the pupils. Reading can- 
not be taught properly by arbitrary rules, the voice of 
the living teacher is indispensable. Teaching average 65. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Elocution. She 

cannot become a successful teacher until she studies the 
pronunciation of words. Not only did she permit mis- 
takes made by the pupils to pass unnoticed, but she mis- 
pronounced many words herself, hos-pit-a-hle, for Aos-pi- 
ta-ble, m-tense for in-tense, etc. ; the errors consisted chiefly 
in changing the accented syllable. In the word machina- 
tion, however, though the accent was correctly marked, 



PEACTICE-TEACHING. 149 

she taught the class to call it " mash-in-a-tion." There 
can be no possible excuse for such carelessness, or rather 
ignorance, since the lady had three days for the prepara- 
tion of the lesson. The dictionary should be kept in con- 
stant use by pupils and teacher. Teaching average 65. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in the Constitution. 

She did well. The lesson was a long one, and somewhat 
difficult, but the lady evinced thorough preparation. She 
ought to have disturbed the repose of the drones in the 
class, by calling upon them more frequently. Explana- 
tions given by the teacher should be repeated by the pu- 
pils: first, to ascertain whether or not they have been 
properly understood, and secondly, to make a deeper im- 
pression upon the minds of the scholars. Indeed, the 
whole business of teaching might be summed up in two 
words, namely, simplify and repeat. Teaching average 95. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Map Drawing. 

She was quite well prepared for the lesson, but did not 
always speak quite distinctly enough ; she required all 
those pupils, who had criticisms to make, to stand, and 
then designated one to give them — a very good plan. 
Miss must be more careful in regard to the gram- 
matical construction of her own sentences. Teaching 
average 90. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Mental Arith- 
metic. She became somewhat confused, and so made 
several mistakes in her Avork. She attempted to solve 
several examples, but each time made some error, either 
of statement or solution. She was not careful enough in 
her markings, omitting to mark one of the pupils for 
absence, and two for recitation. Teaching average 88. 
13* 



150 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Map-Drawing. 

She should have kept one of the divisions at the board 
drawing while the other were reciting. It was the first 
day of map description, she should therefore have given 
them an example of the work desired; instead of this 
she scolded them for not knowing her method. Teachers 
should be careful never to ask for anything but what the 
pupil would reasonably be expected to know. If you 
insist that they shall give anything not found in the 
lesson, or not before given by the teacher, they will be- 
come angry and careless, as shown in the class to-day. 
She did not criticise the map drawn. Teaching average, 82. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Constitution. 

She did well. She used the blackboards to advantage, 
and very carefully examined and criticised the work 
placed there by the pupils. She should speak in a louder 
and more decided tone. Teaching average 93. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She 

gave a very short vocal exercise and omitted the concert 
reading. During the recitation she read remarkably well ; 
her voice was clear and full, her emphasis and inflections 
were correct, and her whole manner free from embarrass- 
ment. The entrance of three or four visitors did not in 
the least disconcert her ; for her calmness and dignity, she 
deserves much commendation. Teaching average 95. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Geography. She 

taught well. She did not call upon enough members of 
the class for recitation. A subject that can be divided 
into portions small enough to enable the teacher to call 
upon each member of the class at each recitation, should 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 151 

be so divided. She made it still worse by calling upon 
several members to recite twice. With a little more 
energy on her part she could have had more work per- 
formed in the forty minutes. Teaching average 90. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Arithmetic, She 

taught very well. The subject, Repetends, was a difficult 
one, which required careful preparation on the part of the 
teacher and close attention during the recitation. Miss 

, conscious of this, made herself i3erfectly familiar 

with the lesson before appearing in class, and when pupils 
failed to explain examples from a want of knowledge, she 
was ready and able to give the necessary information. 
She marked judiciously. Teaching average 90. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Ancient History. 

She was sprightly and animated. She spoke in a clear, 
decided tone; but she pursued no regular plan in con- 
ducting the recitation. Events in Egyptian and Assyrian 
history were indiscriminately mixed, the pupils became 
confused, and the lady herself was somewhat bewildered. 
Teaching average 88. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Grammar. She 

did not speak loud enough for the class to understand her. 
There was much disorder in the class, but no notice was 
taken of it by the teacher. Some carried on a conversa- 
tion among themselves, others asked questions without 
permission, often at the most inappropriate times. Many 
errors passed unnoticed, and the lady gave corrections 
herself which she should have required of the pupils. 
Several times, in attempting to correct, she made the 
errors worse; for instance she parsed verbs that were 



152 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

transitive and in the passive voice as being intransitive 
and active. She must endeavor to gain more confidence 
in herself. Teaching average 75. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in Geometry. She 

taught the class decidedly well. She deserves all the 
more credit, as it was a difficult lesson of her own class-. 
She allowed but one error of work — that I noticed — to 
pass uncorrected. Her method of calling upon the class 
for criticisms was very good. She should strive to speak 
a little more distinctly. Teaching average, 96. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Physiology. She 

evinced perfect familiarity with the subject of the lesson. 
She did not confine herself to the text-book, but asked 
many good, general questions. One of the pupils did not 
understand a portion of the lesson which was to be ex- 
plained by a diagram. Miss endeavored to make 

the matter clear by an explanation, which was very good, 
still the pupil did not see it clearly. I think the teacher 
would have succeeded in clearing the difficulty if she had 
used the pointer instead of designating certain points by 
letters. She spoke a little too low. Teaching average, 96. 

j^igg gave the D class a lesson in Geography. She 

deserves great credit for the distinctness with which she 
speaks, for her care in the preparation of the lesson for the 
day, and for the promptness with which she stops all irregu- 
larities in the class. Her marks for the day were a little 
too high; she did not make distinction enough between 
the good and the poor scholars. Teaching average, 96. 

jyXigg gave the A class a lesson in Elocution. She 

succeeded admirably. The vocal exercises and concert 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 153 

reading were well given. The lady threw herself entirely 
into the work, and this was the real secret of her success. 
Her grade of marking was too high ; otherwise, she did 
very well. Teaching average, 97. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in English Litera- 
ture. She did not spend enough time upon the lesson for 
the day, and consumed too much of the period in review- 
ing old lessons. She was not careful in examining the 
blackboards. Lbs. was permitted to stand as the abbrevi- 
ation for pounds sterling, and whimsicalities was spelled 
with two I's. The lady made no deduction for errors ; all 
the pupils with but one exception received 10. She de- 
serves commendation for speaking in a loud, clear tone. 
Teaching average, 88. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Constitution. 

She did nothing more than hear the recitations. She did 
not venture to give any explanations or to ask them of 
the class, but spent the whole period in repeating again 
and again the words of the text-book. It is probable that 
no pupil knew anything more of the subject on going 
from the room than when she entered. Teachers should 
possess and impart to their pupils some information inde- 
pendent of the book. Teaching average, bb. 

Miss taught the A class Geometry. She did not 

question enough or criticise enough, but almost always 
called upon the class for criticisms. She added no re- 
marks or criticisms herself; thus many important omis- 
sions and errors were unnoticed. She succeeded well in 
calling upon almost every member of the class. Teaching 
average, 75. 



154 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Physiology. She 

was not sufficiently animated and self-possessed. The sub- 
stance of the lesson was recited before the expiration of 
the period, which left the lady at a loss to know what she 
should do with the remainder of the time. It might have 
been profitably employed asking questions of importance 
connected with the lesson ; but instead of doing so, Miss 

turned to me for assistance. She was asked her 

opinion of a disputed point, which, although of slight 
importance, merited some attention ; but she passed it by, 
notwithstanding her attention was called to it several 
times. Teaching average, 76. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in Elocution. She 

displayed the tact and skill of an experienced teacher. 
She assumed full authority over the pupils (though they 
were her classmates), and her whole manner was such that 
a visitor entering the room would have supposed she was 
the permanent teacher. One secret of her success was 
that she had given the reading lesson much home practice 
and preparation. Teaching average, 100. 

Miss taught the A class in Literature. She taught 

well. Though rather quiet, she succeeded in awakening 
the interest of her pupils, and the entire recitation was 
very animated. The class is a good one, and the pupils 
deserve as much commendation as the teacher. Teaching 
average, 96. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in Geography. She 

came before the class well prepared for her duties. She 
did not use the book, though it was written in the cate- 
chetical style — the one most difficult to teach without 



PRACTICE-TEACHING. 155 

some such reference. She by her questions brought out a 
number of points not given in the text-book. Teaching 
average, 97. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Ehetoric. She 

showed a thorough preparation of the lesson and taught 
well. She should have worked a little fiaster. Pupils 
were allowed too much time to think. Teaching aver- 
age, 98. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in History. She 

taught with much dignity and self-possession. She did 
not teach simply by having the lesson recited as the 
author had given it, but asked for the definition of words, 
and gave information not found in the text-book. But 
one error was allowed to pass, which was that of calling 
Queen Victoria the grand-daughter of William of Orange. 
Teaching average, 98. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Physiology. She 

conducted the recitation in a very dignified and lady-like 
manner. The lesson was a difficult one, but the teacher 
seemed to understand the subject thoroughly. There was 
a reference to the retina of the eye in the lesson ; the 
pupils not having studied that subject, did not know what 
the retina was, and called upon the teacher for explana- 
tion ; she attempted to describe it, but failed to make them 
understand because she did not thoroughly understand it 
herself. With this exception, she taught very well. 
Teaching average, 96. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Elocution. She 

is a good teacher, and reads well. • She maintained her 
dignity and composure during the entire recitation, though 
19* 



156 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

several visitors were present. Nothing tends to embarras.^ 
a teacher so much as the entrance of strangers ; the lady's 
calmness and self-possession then are worthy of much 
commendation. Teaching average 100. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Mental Arith- 
metic, She read the questions distinctly, and had them 
correctly solved ; but for the plan of recitation, she helped 
the pupils too much. The method was that called " Chance 
Assignment ; " in this method, as tlie pupils have time to 
think of the problems, the work should be purely that of 
the memory, in regard to the example itself. Teaching 
average 95. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in Literature. She 

evinced thorough preparation, and displayed considerable 
tact in conducting the recitation. Every pupil was called 
on and compelled to recite or confess ignorance. Teaching 
average 98. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She 

selected a very difficult reading-lesson, and not only read 
it well herself, but insisted upon the pupils reading it well 
too. The lady has a good clear voice, but it lacks power ; 
nothing will develop this quality but constant daily prac- 
tice. Teaching average 97. 

Miss taught the C class in Ancient History. She 

did not succeed. Her embarrassment was caused in a 
great measure by not knowing the names of the pupils. 
Teachers should obtain lists of the names, if they are not 
familiar with them. The lesson being one in mythology, 
could have been made very interesting with a slight effort 
on the part of the teacher. Many errors in pronunciation 



PEACTICE-TEACHING. 157 

made by both teacher and pupils, were allowed to pass, 
Teaching average 72. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in Elocution. She 

taught well, but would have succeeded better if she had 
given the lesson a little more home practice. AVhen de- 
livering a passage requiring considerable force, she height- 
ened the pitch of her voice, and thus gave an unpleasant 
shrillness, where the pure orotund tone was needed. 
Teaching average 95. 

Miss gave the B class a lesson in Elocution. She 

is a very sprightly, animated teacher, and reads well. 
She paid special attention to the correct orthoepy of words, 
and insisted upon pupils' making use of their dictionaries 
whenever a word occurred with which they were not 
familiar. Teaching average 100. 

Miss gave the D class a lesson in History. She 

is one of the best teachers in her class. She is sprightly, 
animated, and critical. The lesson was well taught ; a map 
having been neatly drawn on the board, the teacher re- 
quired the most important places referred to in the lesson, 
to be pointed out upon it. Teaching average 100. 

Miss gave the A class a lesson in Chemistry. She 

has improved very much in teaching. She understood the 
subject which she taught, and had given the lesson careful 
preparation. She requested one of the pupils to look for 
the orthoepy of a word wdiich occurred in the lesson. The 
lady turned over the leaves of the dictionary in a very 
careless manner, then took her seat, saying she could not 
find the word, although she must have been conscious all 
the while that she was not searching for it in the proper 
14 



158 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

place. Miss , instead of sending the lady to look for 

the word again, as she should have done, pronounced it 
herself. The teacher should require prompt obedience on 
the part of pupils. Teaching average 95. 

Miss gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She 

is a very energetic teacher, and manifests a deep interest 
in her pupils — hence, her success. A visitor would have 
inferred from her manner, that she was the permanent 
teacher, not a mere substitute for a passing hour. Teach- 
ing average, 100. 



XXVI. 

ATTENTION AS A MENTAL FACULTY, AND AS A 
MEANS OF MENTAL CULTURE. 

TTIHE illustrations which first led to a satisfactory elu- 
-*- cidation of the subject, were drawn from the eye. 
There are many facts in the history of vision, which show 
that we may experience sensations and perceptions and 
other intellectual operations, and may at the time be con- 
scious of the same, without giving them any attention, or, 
at least, without giving them such a degree of attention 
as to have the slightest recollection of them afterwards. 

When, for instance, we read a printed book, the eye 
glances so rapidly from sentence to sentence, that we can 
hardly persuade ourselves that we actually see successively 
every letter. We certainly have no recollection of having 
gone through such an innumerable train of conscious acts 
as the theory necessarily implies. That such, however, is 
the case, is proved by the fact, that if by accident any 
letter is omitted, or transposed, or put upside down, the 
eye at once detects the mistake. The fact is familiar to 
all. It can be accounted for only on the supposition that, 
even in the rapid and cursory perusal of a book, the eye 
actually passes from letter to letter, and gives to each a 
distinct notice. It not only notices each letter, but the 

159 



160 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

position of each in reference to the other letters in the line, 
and even those nice diacritical points by which one letter 
is distinguished from another, as c from e, u from n, b 
from d, p from q. This notice, however, is so slight, the 
transition is so rapid, that we have no recollection of it 
afterwards, and we can hardly persuade ourselves that 
such has been the sober and yet most wonderful fact. 

Take another instance. If, on the occasion of an event- 
ing assemblage, by a sudden movement of the gas-pipe, 
any one should instantly extinguish all the lights in the 
room and leave the building for a time in total dark- 
ness, and if, by an equally sudden movement, he should 
then restore the light to its previous condition, every 
one present would notice the change and have a distinct 
recollection of it afterwards. Yet, every time we close 
our eyes in winking, that is, several times in every 
minute of our waking hours, we experience precisely 
this change from full and perfect vision to total dark- 
ness. But no one ever notices or remembers the fact of 
his winking, unless he stops to make it the subject of 
special attention. 

Sight however is not the only means of illustrating this 
point. We are drawn to a similar conclusion by observing 
the workings of the mind itself, in the act of volition. 
Whenever we make any single volition an object of special 
attention, we are conscious of that volition, and we have 
a distinct recollection of it afterwards. Yet probably not 
one out of ten thousand, possibly not one out of a million, 
of our simple volitions, is ever known to us after the mo- 
ment of its occurrence. In voluntary muscular action, 



ATTENTION. 161 

every distinct movement requires a distinct volition. And 
how innumerable are the movements necessary to the ac- 
complishment of any one of the ordinary purposes of life ! 
We sit down for example to write a letter to a friend. The 
nimble pen dances from point to point over the darkening 
page, and when we reach the bottom, we have not the least 
recollection of having willed any one of those countless 
muscular movements which have been necessary to what, 
but for its every-day occurrence, would be accounted the 
greatest feat of legerdemain ever performed by man ! 

Take for example the act of reading aloud. Every 
letter requires for its utterance at least one distinct mus- 
cular contraction. Some letters require several. Now it 
has been found on trial that we are able to pronounce 
more than a thousand letters in a minute. That is, during 
every minute that we are reading aloud, we perform be- 
tween one and two thousand distinct muscular movements, 
and by necessity a like number of antecedent acts of the 
will, to say nothing of those other acts, not less numerous 
in the case of a speaker, connected with the general move- 
ment of the body in earnest gesticulation. Yet after the 
hour's performance, what does the speaker or the reader 
remember of all these countless volitions ? Nothing but 
the one general purpose to please, instruct, or persuade an 
audience. 

The conclusion, toward which these illustrations point, 
is objected to by some writers, on the ground of the in- 
credible rapidity Avhich it attributes to our intellectual 
operations. Is it possible, it is asked, that we can crowd 
into such a space of time so many acts of the will, and 
14* 



162 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

that we are, at the moment when each happens, conscious 
of its presence ? Is it not more probable that these rapid 
muscular actions are resolvable, in some way, into the law 
of habit ? May they not become in some sense mechanical 
and automatic, so as to require no intervention of the will ? 
Take for example, the case of a person learning to play 
upon a musical instrument. The first step is to move the 
fingers from key to key with a slow motion, looking at the 
notes, and exerting an express act of volition at every 
note. By degrees, however, the motions somehow cling to 
each other, and to the impressions of the notes, in the way 
of associations, the acts of volition all the while groAving 
less and less express, until at last they become quite eva- 
nescent and imperceptible. An expert will play from notes 
or from memory, and with a rapidity of motion that is 
perfectly bewildering, while at the same time he himself 
is carrying on quite a different train of thoughts in his 
mind, or even perhaps holding a conversation with another. 
Hence, it is concluded, by the writers referred to, that in 
these cases there is really no intervention of that idea or 
state of the mind called will. 

The authorities for this hypothesis are among the high- 
est that can be named in the history of intellectual science. 
Let us see how far the hypothesis explains the facts of 
the case. The most rapid performer, it is obvious, can at 
any time retard his execution, until his movements become 
so slow that each one may be made, as originally it was 
made, the subject of special attention, and may be dis- 
tinctly remembered afterwards. Now, according to the 
hypothesis proposed, we will our actions, and are conscious 



ATTENTION. 1^3 

both of the act, and the antecedent volition, so long as 
their rapidity is confined to a certain rate ; but, as soon as 
the rapidity exceeds that rate, the operation is taken out 
of our hands, and is carried on by some unknown power, 
of which we know no more than we do of the circulation 
of the blood, or of the systole and diastole of the heart ! 
Such a supposition is about as reasonable as it would be to 
say that a projectile passes through the intermediate space, 
when it is thrown with such a moderate degree of velocity 
that we can see it, in its progress ; but, when it is thrown 
with such velocity as to become invisible, it ceases to pass 
through the intermediate space, and reaches the goal only 
because projectiles have the habit of doing so ! 

The hypothesis then breaks down, and we are forced 
back to our original supposition, namely, that those ac- 
tions which are voluntary originally, never cease to be so ; 
that when, as in the cases supposed, w^e retain no recollec- 
tion of particular volitions, it is because of some law of our 
nature by which we are capable of recollecting only those 
acts upon which the attention has been fixed with a certain 
degree of intensity and for some perceptible space of time ; 
that the volition, in other words, is too feeble and too rapid 
to leave any impression on the memory. To argue that 
there has been no volition, because we do not recollect it, 
is as absurd as it would be to say that there has been no 
muscular act, because in many cases we have as little recol- 
lection of the muscular act, as we have of the antecedent 
volition. 

Besides, there are many other mental acts, as rapid as 
those which have been adduced, — so rapid that not the 



164 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

least recollection of them remains, — where, yet, this me- 
chanical or automatic hypothesis affords not the least ex- 
planation. Thus the expert accountant in a Bank adds 
up a long column of figures with the same rapidity and 
ease with which ordinary persons would read a passage 
from a familiar author, and he brings out in the end the 
exact sum, which he can do in no other way than by taking 
note in passing of the precise character and value of each 
figure. Yet, at the end of such a process, the accountant 
has no more recollection of those rapidly succeeding acts 
of the mind, than has the musical performer of those 
countless volitions put forth in the course of a piece of 
brilliant musical instrumentation. 

As to the objection, that the theory attributes an almost 
inconceivable rapidity to some of our mental operations, 
it may be answered, in the first place, that there is no rea- 
son, surely, why mind should not be capable of as rapid 
action as its handmaid, matter ; and, in the second place, 
that our ideas of time are relative, quite as much as our 
ideas of space ; and if the microscope has revealed a world 
of wonders too minute in point of space to be observed by 
the naked eye, in whose existence we yet believe with un- 
doubting confidence, we may without greater difiiculty be- 
lieve in the existence of mental acts crowded into so nar- 
row a point of time, so rapid and transitory in their occur' 
rence, as to leave no impression upon the memory. 

The facts which have been adduced, then, teach clearly 
two things : first, that by far the greatest part of what we 
do and experience and are necessarily conscious of at the 
time of their occurrence, immediately fade from the recol- 



ATTENTION. 165 

lection, as shadows pass over a landscape ; and secondly, 
that in order to the recollection of any act or object, it is 
necessary that the mind be fixed upon it for some percep- 
tible space of time and with some sensible degree of atten- 
tion. It is this indissoluble connection of the attention 
with memory, this absolute dependence of the latter upon 
the former, which gives the subject such far-reaching im- 
port in considering the means of intellectual culture. 

How it is that we are able to exclude all subjects but 
one from the thoughts, is not very easy of explanation. 
It is obvious that we cannot do it by direct volition. The 
very fact of our willing not to attend to a particular ob- 
ject, fixes our attention upon it. That we have, however, 
some power and agency in fixing our attention on one ob- 
ject and in withdrawing it from another, is a fact within 
the knowledge and experience of every one, whether we 
can explain the mode by which it is done or not. We 
have the power of what the chemists call " elective affin- 
ity ; " we make our choice of some one of the various ob- 
jects claiming the attention, and fix it upon that ; and it 
seems to be a law of our nature, that when we thus direct 
the attention to one object, all others, of themselves, and 
by some natural necessity, retire from the thoughts. This 
is as near an approach, probably, as we shall ever make, 
towards an exact verbal expression of a fact, for an inti- 
mate knowledge of which, after all, every man must refer 
to his own consciousness. 

This power of singling out and fastening upon some one 
object to the exclusion of all others, — in other words, this 
power of attention — exists in almost infinite degrees in 



166 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

different individuals. The degree in which it exists is the 
measure of a man's intellectual stature. No man can be 
truly great who does not possess it to a high degree. To 
command our attention is to command ourselves, to be 
truly master of our own powers and resources. 

The subject, then, becomes one of first importance in 
every kind of either mental or moral improvement. Its 
vital connection with the faculty of memory has been 
already suggested. Perhaps, however, this branch of the 
subject should be set forth with a little more distinctness. 
There are many vague, dreamy notions afloat on the sub- 
ject of memory, standing comparisons and metaphors, in- 
tended to illustrate its uses and magnify its importance, 
but not declaring with any degree of precision what it is. 
It is called, for instance, the " storehouse of our ideas." 
The metaphor conveys undoubtedly a certain amount of 
truth in regard to the subject. At the same time, there 
are some important particulars, in which the comparison, 
for it is nothing more, conveys a wrong impression. Ex- 
perience teaches us, for instance, that recollections, unlike 
other articles of store, are from the time of their deposit 
undergoing a continual process of decay, and if they do 
not fade entirely from the mind, it is because we occasion- 
ally bring them anew under the review of the mind, and 
thus restore them to their original freshness and vigor. 

Dismissing, therefore, the metaphor, I shall, I presume, 
express with sufficient accuracy the established doctrine 
on this subject by the following statements : that of the 
great multitude of mental operations which we experience, 
by far the larger part perish at the moment of their birth ; 



ATTENTION. 167 

that others, to which for any reason we give, at the time 
of their occurrence, some sufficient degree of attention, 
afterwards recur to us, or are in some way present to our 
thoughts ; that this recurrence of former ideas to our 
thoughts is sometimes spontaneous, without any voluntary 
action on our part, and sometimes the consequence of a 
direct effort of the will; and lastly, that the capacity 
which we have of being thus revisited by former thoughts 
is called memory, while the thoughts themselves, which 
thus return, are called memories, or more commonly recol- 
lections. 

How it is that by an act of volition we can summon 
again into the mind an idea which has formerly been 
present, and which is now absent, we have the same dif- 
ficulty in explaining which we had in explaining how, by 
an act of volition, we can banish a thought which is now 
present, or by the power of attention can detain some one 
thought to the exclusion of all others. To think what 
particular thing it is that we wish to remember, is in fact 
to have remembered it already. It is an obstruse and dif- 
ficult inquiry, into which it is not necessary now to enter. 
A more important inquiry, and one connected directly 
with our present theme, relates to the diflTerent kinds of 
memory, and their connection severally with the faculty 
of attention. 

Quickness of memory is that quality which is most 
easily developed, especially in young persons. It is also 
its most showy quality, and the temptation to give it an 
inordinate development is strong. The habit of getting 
things by rote, is easily acquired by practice. It is aston- 



168 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

ishing what masses of Scripture texts young children will 
get by heart, when under somespecial'sHmulus of reward 
or display. I have often refused to publish marvellous 
feats of this kind, not because I thought the accounts in- 
credible, (unfortunately, they were too true,) but because 
I thought they were a species of mental excess, and they 
should no more be encouraged than bodily excesses. A 
little girl in my own Sunday-School once actually com- 
mitted to memory the whole of the Westminster Assem-, 
bly's Shorter Catechism in three days ! Six months after- 
wards she hardly knew a word of it. It had been a regu- 
lar mental debauch. A few more such atrocities w^ould 
have made her an idiot. College records tell us of what 
are called " crammed men," that is, men who literally 
stuff themselves with knowledge in order to pass a partic- 
ular examination, or to gain a particular honor, and who 
afterwards forget their knowledge, as fast as they have 
acquired it. There is a well authenticated instance of a 
student who actually learned the six books of Euclid by 
heart, though he could not tell the difference between an 
angle and a triangle. The memory of such men is quick- 
ened like that of the parrot. They learn purely by rote. 
Real mental attention, the true digester of knowledge, is 
never roused. The knowledge which they gorge, is never 
truly assimilated and made their own. 

A quality of memory vastly more important than quick- 
ness, is tenacity. To hold on to what we get, is the secret 
of mental, no less than of pecuniary accumulations. The 
mind, too, like other misers, clings most tenaciously to that 
which has cost it most labor. Come lightly, go lightly, 



ATTENTION. 169 

the world over. Knowledge which comes into the mind 
without toil and effort, without protracted and laborious 
attention, is apt to go as easily as it came. 

But, by far the most important quality of memory, for 
the practical purposes of life, is readiness. Like quick- 
ness and tenacity, it is to be greatly improved, if not ac- 
quired by practice. It is in the cultivation of this quality, 
that the power of a good teacher shines forth most conspic- 
uously. Quickness and tenacity may be cultivated by soli- 
tary study. But readiness requires for its development a 
live teacher, and the stir of the school-room and the class. 
Here it is that the art of questioning shows its wonderful 
resources. Kepeated and continued interrogatories, judi- 
ciously worded, have a sort of talismanic power. They 
oblige the scholar to bring out his knowledge from its hid- 
den recesses, to turn it over and over, and inside out, and 
upside down, to look at it and to handle it, so that not only 
it becomes forever and indestructibly his own, but he can 
ever afterwards use it at wil^with the same readiness that 
he uses his hands or his eyes. This is what a skilful teacher 
may do for his scholars, by a knowledge and practice of the 
art of questioning. Unfortunately, teachers in general find 
it much easier passively to hear a lesson, than to muster as 
much intellectual energy as is necessary to ask a question. 

It was a remark of Bacon's, that, if we wish to commit 
anything to memory, we will accomplish more in ten readr 
ings, if at each perusal we make the attempt to repeat it 
from memory, referring to the book only when the mem- 
ory fails, than we Avould by a hundred readings made in 
the ordinary way, and without any intervening trials. 
15 



170 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

The explanation of this fact is, that each effort to recol- 
lect the passage secures to the subsequent perusal a more 
intense degree of attention ; and it seems to be a law of 
our nature, not only that there is no memory without at- 
tention, which I have labored at some length to establish, 
but that the degree of memory is in a great measure pro- 
portioned to the degree of the attention. 

You will see at once the bearing of this fact upon that 
species of intellectual dissipation, called " general reading/' 
in which the mental voluptuary reads merely for momen- 
tary excitement, in the gratification of an idle curiosity, 
and which is as enervating and debilitating to the intel- 
lectual faculties, as other kinds of dissipation are to the 
bodily functions. One book, well read and thoroughly di- 
gested, nay, one single train of thought, carefully elabo- 
rated and attentively considered, is worth more than any 
conceivable amount of that indolent, dreamy sort of read- 
ing in which many persons indulge. There is in fact no 
more unsafe criterion of knowledge than the number of 
books a man has read. A young man once told me he 
had read the entire list of publications of the American 
Sunday-School Union. He was about as wise as the man 
at the hotel, who began at the top of the bill of fare with 
the intention of eating straight through to the bottom ! 
Depend upon it, this mental gorging is debilitating and 
debauching alike to the moral and the intellectual consti- 
tution. There is too much reading even of good books. 
No one should ever read a book, without subsequent medi- 
tation or conversation about it, and an attempt to make 
the thoughts his own, by a vigorous process of mental as- 



ATTENTION. 171 

similation. Any continuous intellectual occupation, which 
does not leave us wiser and stronger, most assuredly will 
leave us weaker, just as filling the body with food which 
it does not digest, only makes it feeble and sickly. We are 
the worse for reading any book, if we are not the better 
for it. 

There is an obvious distinction on this subject, of some 
practical importance, first suggested, so far as I am aware, 
by the Scotch metaphysician, Dr. Reid, between attention 
as directed to external objects, and the same faculty di- 
rected to what passes within us. When we attend to what 
is without us, to what we hear, or see, or smell, or taste, 
or touch, the process is called observation. When, on the 
other hand, dismissing for the time all notice of the ex- 
ternal world, we turn our thoughts inward, and consider 
only what is passing in the inner chambers of the mind, — 
when, for instance, we analyze our motives, or notice the 
workings of passion, or scan the mysterious and subtle 
agency of the will, the process is called reflection. This 
latter species of attenion is one much more difficult of 
development than the former. It is developed ordinarily 
much later in life, — seldom, I believe, developed to any con- 
siderable extent before the age of manhood, — developed 
by some professions and pursuits much more than by 
others, — and in a very large class of mankind, probably 
the majority, never developed at all. 

This species of attention, which is thus directed inwards, 
subjective attention some would call it, — in other words, 
the reflective powers, — are, I doubt not, capable of being 
cultivated much earlier in life than the age which 1 have 



172 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

indicated as the normal period of their development. I 
am constrained, however, in opposition to many high au- 
thorities in education, to doubt the wisdom of a precocious 
cultivation of this part of our intellectual system. In all 
our plans of education, we should closely follow nature, 
who seems to have reserved the judgment and the reflective 
powers for the latest, as they certainly are the most per- 
fect, of her endowments. We, who are teachers, have 
chiefly to do with those whose powers are as yet immature, 
and whose attention is to be cultivated primarily in its 
direction to external objects. Our business, in other words, 
is to train our pupils first of all to habits of observation. 

In doing this, it is of some practical importance to bear 
in mind the well-known difference, in respect to memory, 
between the objects of different senses. Whether it be 
attributed to the different degrees of perfection with which 
the qualities of bodies are perceived, or to some difference 
in the qualities themselves, or whatever may be the cause, 
the fact is established beyond a question, that the knowl- 
edge which comes to us through the medium of the eye is 
of all kinds of knowledge the most easily and the most 
perfectly remembered. We remember, indeed, the temper- 
ature of one day as distinguished from that of another ; 
we remember the sound of a voice ; we can conceive, in 
its absence, the odor or the taste of a particular object ; 
but none of these ideas come to us with that definiteness 
and perfection which mark our recollections of what we 
have seen. It requires, for instance, but ordinary powers 
of attention and perception, for a person who has one good 
look at a house, to recall distinctly to his mind the ideas 



ATTENTION. 173 

of its height, shape, color, material, the number of stories, 
the pitch of the roof, the kind of shutters to the windows, 
the position of the door, the fashion of panels, the bell- 
handle, the plate, even the little canary-bird with its cage 
in the windows above, and the roses, geraniums, and what 
else may be fairer still, in the window below. These are 
all objects of sight. In their absence, he can bring to 
mind and describe them, with almost the same accuracy 
that he could if they were actually present. Now, it is 
impossible to obtain a like precision and fulness in our 
conceptions of a quality which we have learned through 
any other sense. We form in the one case a mental image 
or picture of the object, which in the other case is impos- 
sible. We can by no possibility form a mental or any 
other image of the song of canary, of the perfume of a 
rose, or of any other quality, except those which address 
us through the eye. Our conceptions of taste, smell, 
touch, and even of hearing, in the absence of the objects 
of sense, have a certain dimness, vagueness, mistiness, un- 
certainty about them. The conceptions of visible objects, 
on the contrary, are definite, precise, and most easily re- 
called. Hence the knowledge derived through the sight, 
is, of all kinds of knowledge, the most accurate, the most 
easily acquired, and the most lasting. 

The practical application of these views to the science 
of teaching, is too obvious to require more than a passing 
notice. Every thing which the young are to make the 
subject of their attention, for the purpose of remembering 
it, should be represented as far as possible to the eye. If 

the object itself, on account of its bulk, or its expensiveness, 
15^ 



174 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

or for any other reason, cannot be exhibited for inspection, 
let there be some visible delineation of it by brush or 
pencil. If the thing to be remembered be something ab- 
stract or unreal, having neither form nor substance, per- 
haps it may have, or the teacher may make for it, some 
concrete, visible symbol, as has been done with the formulas 
of logic and the abstractions of arithmetic and algebra. 
These visible symbols on the slate and the blackboard 
give to those sciences all the advantages in this respect 
which were supposed to be peculiar to some of the branches 
of physical science. A boy who has forgotten every mere 
verbal rule both of arithmetic and algebra, will remember 
the formula, x^ -\-2xy -^y'^, just as perfectly and on the 
same principle, as he will remember the face of the man 
who taught it to him. It is something which he has seen. 
Why has geometry in all ages been found to be of such 
peculiar value as a means of intellectual training ? Because 
of the visible delineation of its doctrines by diagrams ad- 
dressed to the eye. How much more readily and certainly 
chemical science can now be acquired, since the adoption 
of the present mode of symbolizing its doctrines by com- 
binations of letters and figures. Arguments, conjectures, 
theories, respecting qualities addressed alike to every sense, 
respecting functions indeed not cognizable by any sense, 
are now presented on the board in visible symbolic formu- 
las, which have the same advantage over the former mode 
of presenting the subject, that the sight of a chess-board 
during the progress of a game has over a mere verbal de- 
scription of the movements. 

The truth of this doctrine is strikingly illustrated in 



ATTENTION. 175 

the present mode of teaching geography, as compared with 
that once in use, when a child, instead of looking at the 
map of a country, with its boundaries and other physical 
characters painted to the eye, had to grope through a 
trackless wilderness of description. The study will be still 
more improved, when children shall be universally re- 
quired to make as well as to look at maps, — when, to the 
definiteness of knowledge coming through the sight, there 
shall be added that inerasible impression upon the mem- 
ory, which comes from fixedness and continuity of atten- 
tion. It is impossible for a child to draw a map, without 
looking intently, and with continued attention, upon every 
part of that which is to be delineated. The two conditions 
to perfect recollection are combined, and the knowledge, 
which is the result, is the very last to fade from the 
memory. 

Every teacher of small children knows how much more 
certainly they learn to spell by seeing than by hearing. 
You may repeat to a child five times over the sounds 
which make up a word, and he will not recollect it with 
half the certainty that he would on seeing it once. The 
same principle which leads to this result, and which indi- 
cates the proj^riety, not only of looking at maps but of 
making them, in order to the more perfect knowledge of 
geography, will suggest to the thoughtful teacher the ex- 
pediency of children's not only looking at words, but of 
writing them, in order to become perfect spellers- 
Mental arithmetic has its fascinations. It has, too, I am 
ready to admit, solid advantages. Its advantages, how- 
ever, I apprehend are not precisely those which are some- 



176 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

times attributed to it. There can be no doubt, I think, 
that it helps to cultivate the reflective powers ; that it re- 
quires, and by requiring gives, the ability to confine the 
attention to continued mental processes. But for making 
ex]3ert practical accountants, which is generally quoted as 
its distinguishing benefit, I confess I am partial to the slate 
and pencil, and to that venerable parallelogram, the old- 
fashioned Multiplication Table, in the shape it came down 
to us from Pythagoras. 

The reader will not, of course, understand me as wishing 
to discard Mental arithmetic. All that I mean to suggest 
is the inquiry, whether its advantages are not looked for 
in the wrong direction, whether they are not sometimes 
over-estimated, and whether this mode of teaching arith- 
metic, especially when pursued as a hobby, is not some- 
times pushed too far, and made the means of curious dis- 
play, rather than of solid and lasting benefit. In teaching 
mental arithmetic, too, for I would certainly teach it to 
some extent, I would suggest the expediency of teaching 
children, in performing these mental operations, to think 
in figures, in other words, to form conceptions of the arith- 
metical figures and signs, which are visible objects, rather 
than of quantities and relations, which are mere abstrac- 
tions. Multiplication is a mere metaphysical entity. The 
sign of multiplication is a simple, visible symbol, addressed 
to the eye, and capable of being conceived by the mind 
with unmistakable clearness and precision. A child count- 
ing its fingers in the first steps of learning to add and to 
take away, is a pretty sight, doubtless. But it is painful to 
see a person grown to man's estate, and in other respects 



ATTENTION. 177 

well educated, as I have very often seen, still dependent 
upon the same infantile contrivance, — still counting fin- 
gers when required to add long columns of figures. Count 
the fingers, if necessary, in order to get the child under 
way. But the sooner the leading-string can be dropped, 
and the child can be made to picture in his mind the pure 
figures and signs, their combinations and results, without 
reference to fingers, or apples, or cakes, or tops, the better 
for his arithmetic, and the better for his mental cultivation. 
The subject has a painful interest for the Sabbath-School 
Teacher. The teacher of the infant school, indeed, has 
some opportunity for employing this principle of pictorial 
representation, in teaching the little ones of his charge. 
The infant school-room usually has conveniences for maps 
and picture cards and diagrams, and even blackboards ; 
and most infant school teachers wisely avail themselves of 
the opportunity afforded. But go into the main school-room 
— what can the teacher do? Twenty, thirty, forty classes 
huddled together into one room, compact as sheep in a pen, 
how can the individual teacher, if disposed, use adequate 
visible illustrations for the instruction of his class? 
Where shall he place his blackboard? where shall he 
hang up his maps ? where shall he suspend his models ? 
where shall he exhibit his specimens ? The utmost that 
can be done in most of our schools, as at present provided 
for, is to have a few maps on the distant walls of the room 
which the superintendent may refer to, whenever he 
chooses, and which all the children may see who can! 
The time must come, however, when the teaching of reli- 
gious truth will be considered of as much importance as 



178 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

the teaching of arithmetic or of chemistry, and the Sab- 
bath-School will have the same facilities for imparting in- 
struction as the week-day school. But that time has not 
yet come. In the meanwhile, let the teacher carefully 
avail himself of whatever subsidiary aids are within his 
reach. No teacher should ever present himself before his 
class without a Bible Atlas and a Bible Dictionary in his 
hand. Many of those things with which his class ought 
to be made acquainted, are here not only described, but 
delineated, with equal accuracy and beauty. Thanks to 
the booksellers and the religious publication societies, the 
scenes of sacred history, and indeed religious topics gen- 
erally, have been illustrated in cheap pictorial cards, both 
large and small, and with admirable fidelity and skill. 
These form a part of the indispensable furniture of the 
Sunday-School teacher. They are to him as necessary as 
are experiments, or a cabinet of specimens, to the lecturer 
on the physical sciences. The Sabbath-School teacher 
should be continually on the look-out for publications of 
this kind, not only for instructing and furnishing his own 
mind with definite ideas, but for exhibition to his class. 
A wise teacher will not only have something to say to his 
class, but also something to show. The ideas which the 
child gets from looking at really instructive pictures and 
maps, never leave him. How much also our intelligent 
apprehension of the scriptures is increased, by a knowledge 
of topography, and by associating each event in the sacred 
narration with the place in which it occurred? 

It may be proper to say, too, in this connection, that it 
is with a view to the principle now under consideration, 



ATTENTION. 179 

tkat in preparing books and papers for the young, authors 
and publishers feel justified in giving so much labor and 
space to pictorial illustration. When, indeed, such illus- 
trations are merely for display, they deserve the contempt 
which they often receive. But when these pictorial illus- 
trations have a definite meaning and design, when they 
teach something, when they connect in the child's mind 
sound religious truth with distinct and easily remembered 
visible forms, they are a really valuable aid in the incul- 
cation of doctrine. 

The power of attention, like all the mental powers, 
is by nature greater in some than in others. Still, there is 
no power more susceptible of improvement. The impor- 
tance of its cultivation cannot well be over-stated. It 
affects not one study only, but all studies ; not one mode of 
study only, but every mode of study, by text-book or by 
lecture ; lessons to be recited by memory, or those by ques- 
tion and answ^er ; not even study only, but conduct and 
manners, the regulation of the heart and the formation of 
the character. The precise measure of a child's success, 
in every thing that pertains to his character and standing 
as a scholar, will in nine cases out of ten be his power and 
habit of attention. There are indeed lamentable cases of 
wilful and intentional disorder. Yet every teacher knows 
that by far the greater portion of the things which inter- 
rupt and disturb a school arise from thoughtlessness and 
inattention. There are also equally undoubted cases of 
ignorance that is no crime. Yet the great majority of 
those who fail in their studies, fail simply because they do 
not attend. To attend, however, means something more 



180 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

than merely to be bodily present, more even than to have 
the ears open and the eyes fixed in the direction of the 
speaker, when a thing is said, or done. An old lady used 
to sit in the same aisle with me in church, and unfortu- 
nately lived opposite me in the street, who was neither deaf 
nor blind, and who was never absent from church, and yet 
she sent over invariably on Sunday evenings to know what 
it was the minister said about that meeting on Wednesday 
night, or that meeting on Friday night, — she did not 
rightly understand ! 

But it is not necessary to go to church, to find those who 
" having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, neither do 
they understand," who look without seeing, and hear with- 
out comprehending. Publish a notice in your school, 
making some change of hours or lessons, or giving any 
specific direction. No matter how simple, or how plainly 
expressed, the notice may be, or how particularly attention 
may be called beforehand to the announcement about to 
be made, where is the happy teacher who has been able on 
such an occasion to make himself understood by all? 
Teachers and preachers and speakers of every name have 
generally very little idea how much they are misunder- 
stood. Let me give some instances. 

In my own Sunday-School, I had neglected one morning 
to bring with me the teacher's class-books. After opening 
the school, I rang the bell as a signal for attention. There 
was a general hush throughout the room. All eyes were 
turned to the desk. I said : " Your class-books unfortu- 
nately have been left behind this morning. They have 
been sent for, however, and they will soon be here. As 



ATTENTION. 181 

soon as they come, I will bring them round to the several 
classes. In the meantime, you may go on with your regu- 
lar lessons." The bell was then tapped again, and the 
routine of the school .resumed. In about a minute, a girl 
came up to the desk, with, " Sir, teacher says, will you 
please to send her class-book ; it was not brought round, 
as usual, this morning, before school opened ! " Here was 
a class of ten girls, averaging twelve years of age, and 
not one of them, nor their teacher, had heard or under- 
stood the notice which I thought I had made so plain ! 

Here is another instance. At the examination for ad- 
mission to the Philadelphia High School, as a means of 
testing among other things how far this very faculty of 
hearing and of attention has been cultivated, the candi- 
dates are required to copy a passage from dictation. These 
exercises are always preserved for reference, and in order 
to show the fairness of the examination. On one occasion, 
when I was Principal of the School, I took the pains to 
copy out a few of the exercises, in order to show the sin- 
gular freaks into which an uncultivated ear may be led. 
One or two specimens will serve to illustrate the point. 
The first clause with its variations, was as follows : — 

Every breach of veracity indicates some latent vice. 



<( 


bridge 




rascality 


(C 


" latest vice. 


it 


breech 




feracity 


a 


" latinet vice. 


(I 


preach 




eracity 


(I 


" late device. 


« 


branch 




vivacity 


(( 


" great advice. 


(( 


(( 




veracity 


(C 


" late advice. 


it 


(( 




(( 


" 


" ladovice. 


tt 


(( 




(C 


i( 


" ladened vice. 


16 













182 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Every branch of veracity in the next some latent vice. 
Every reach of their ascidity indicates some advice. 

In another part of the passage occurred the following : 
Petty operations. 
Petty alterations. 
Petty observations. 
Patriarchal occupations. 
Petty oblations. 

Now of what use is it to a boy who mistakes " petty " 
for "patriarchal," "latent vice" for "great advice," 
"breach of veracity" for "reach of their ascidity," who 
is so untrained that he really cannot hear what is said, or 
see what is done, — of what use is it to such a boy, merely 
because he has gone through a prescribed routine of books 
and classes, or perchance because he has attained a certain 
amount of years and of pounds avoirdupois, to be pushed 
forward into a higher department to attend lectures on 
chemistry, or anatomy, or morals, or history, or literature ? 
It is preposterous. It is an insult to the Professor, and an 
injury to the boy. 

This, then, is the burden of my song. We cannot take 
too much pains in early life in rousing this power of at- 
tention. Depend upon it, no matter how much learning, 
so called, is crammed into a youth, his intellectual devel- 
opment has not begun until this power is roused. He 
may have a vague, dreamy sort of knowledge ; he may do 
sums by rule, and he may parse by rote, and do many 
other wondrous things ; but his powers are not invigorated, 
he does not grow, until he begins really to see and hear, 
and feel terra Jirma under his feet. 



ATTENTION. Ig3 

The principle which I am illustrating applies with spe- 
cial force to that part of a child's education which consists 
in learning the meaning of words. I have serious doubts 
whether children ordinarily learn much of the real mean- 
ing of words by committing definitions to memory. What 
is a definition ? It is only expressing the meaning of one 
word by the use of another word as nearly as possible 
synonymous. Now, in the case of a child, it is at least an 
even chance that that other word is just as unknown as 
the one it is intended to explain. It is like, in algebra, 
solving an equation with two unknown quantities, by giv- 
ing the value of one unknown quantity in terms of the 
other. A child, for instance, is told that " potent " means 
"efficacious," that "power" means " ability," that "potion" 
means a " physical draught," that " potential " means " ex- 
isting in possibility, not in act." These are definitions 
taken at random from a book in common use in our public 
schools. The definitions possibly are good enough for the 
purpose for which they were designed. I am not quarrel- 
ling with the definitions. But, surely, it is not by these 
that a child is to learn the meaning of the words. Whether 
he is told that " power " means " ability," or " ability " 
means " power," that " potent " means " efficacious, "or " ef- 
ficacious " means " potent," in neither case, nine times out 
of ten, is any addition made to his stock of knowledge. 
It is not until much later in life, — until in fact our knowl- 
edge of words is already very much extended, that we profit 
much by learning formal definitions. But in childhood, 
we must learn the meaning and power of words, just as 
the mechanic becomes acquainted with his tools, by ob- 



184 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

serving their use. A boy, for instance, reads this sentence. 
" The drug was very effieacious." If the word is quite new 
to him, and there is nothing in the clause preceding or fol- 
lowing to indicate its meaning, it is not at all unlikely that 
he may suppose it to mean " poisonous." If, however, 
from the context, he finds that a person who had been sick, 
was made suddenly well, and this statement followed by 
the remark, that " the drug was very efficacious," he • will 
probably get the idea that the word means " healing," or 
"curative." He reads again, in another place, that a 
certain mode of teaching penmanship was found to be 
very " efficacious." Here is a new use of the word, quite 
difierent from the other, and he is obliged to exclude from 
his idea of its meaning every thing like " healing." So 
he goes on, every fresh example cutting ofi" some extrane- 
ous idea which the previous examples had led him to at- 
tach to the word, and every step onward coming nearer to 
the general idea, though he may never express it in words, 
of something which accomplished its object, whatever that 
object may be. It is, I believe, chiefly by observing in 
this way the manner in which words are used, that chil- 
dren do and must learn their meaning. It is, in other 
words, by quickening and cultivating the habit of atten- 
tion to the meaning, — by training a child, when he is 
reading, to imagine, not that he is reading the words, but 
that he is reading the sense, by accustoming him to look 
through the word, to the sense, just as he would look at 
objects out of doors through the window, and to consider 
the words, as he would consider the glass, merely as a me- 
dium, through which, and unmindful of it, he looks at 
something beyond, — which something is the meaning. 



ATTENTION. 185 

Let me not be misunderstood in regard to this matter 
of definitions. I believe it to be of the utmost importance 
that children should be constantly required to give defini- 
tions or explanations of the words whose meaning they 
have acquired. All I mean to call in question is, whether 
that meaning to any considerable extent is acquired by 
committing to memory formal definitions prepared by 
others. When they have once learned the meaning of a 
word, which is to be done mainly, if not only, by observing 
its use, then by all means let them be required to express 
that meaning by other words which they know. Such an 
exercise cannot be too much insisted on. It is one of the 
best means of securing that attention to the signification 
of words, which is so much wanted. It requires the child, 
moreover, to bring his knowledge continually to the test. 
It cultivates at once accuracy of thought, and accuracy 
of language, which is the vehicle of thought. Train a 
child, therefore, to the habit of attention, first to the mean- 
ing of words as gathered from observation of their use, 
and secondly to the expression of that meaning in lan- 
guage appropriate and intelligible to others. 

I have dwelt a little on this subject, because, as in the 
matter of hearing, I doubt whether people generally are 
aware how little children understand what they read. Nor 
is this ignorance confined to children. In our acts of de- 
votion, we are all in the habit of using certain stereotyped 
phrases, without attaching to them any definite meaning, 
without perhaps so much as having even thought whether 
they had a meaning. This same pernicious habit is seen 
also in our reading of the Scriptures. We have read the 



183 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

phrases over from childhood, until we have become so 
familiar with them, that we are obliged often to stop, and 
by a sort of compulsory process to challenge each word 
as it passes, and see whether it really conveys any meaning 
to our mind. 

If I were to say to a class, " The Bible tells us of a man 
who was older than his father," or some such apparent con- 
tradiction in terms, the sharp antithesis would doubtless 
arrest their attention, and I would at least be asked to 
explain myself. Yet, ten to one, they have read, hundreds 
of times, of him who is " the root and the offspring of 
David, the bright and morning star," without noticing 
anything at all remarkable in the expression. It is to 
them merely something good and pious, couched in a very 
pleasant and sonorous flow of words, and meaning doubt- 
less something very comforting and edifying. 

I was once teaching temporarily a young ladies' Bible 
Class. The average age of the members was at least 
seventeen. They were the pick from a large city school, 
and had been selected for their superior educational ad- 
vantages and attainments. Most of them were attending 
expensive private schools during the week. Wishing to 
satisfy myself as to the general knowledge and the intel- 
lectual habits of the members, I took the plan of simply 
reading verse about, stopping from time to time to talk 
familiarly about anything which might happen to suggest 
itself. This verse among others was read : it is from the 
account of the miracle on the day of Pentecost : " And 
there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, 
and it sat upon each of them." I found, upon inquiring, 



ATTENTION. 187 

that not one in that large class had the remotest idea of 
what was meant by the word " cloven." One young lady 
thought it meant "fiery," another "flaming," another 
" winged," and so on. Most of them, however, said that 
they really had never thought of the matter before. 
Probably every one of them had read the passage hun- 
dreds of times ; and when we began talking about it, no 
one of them seemed to have an idea that there was any- 
thing in the verse which she did not understand. It was 
not until I took it up, word by word, and challenged a per- 
emptory and sharp scrutiny into the meaning attached to 
each word, that the remarkable fact came out which I 
have stated. 

One or two more leaves from my professional experience 
will be given. 

During the greater part of my professional life, it has 
been a part of my duty to examine candidates for the 
office of teacher in the public schools. Out of ninety- 
eight candidates for the office of assistant teacher, whom 
I examined on one occasion, only one knew the meaning 
of the word " sumptuary," although in the public discus- 
sion then going on about the license law, the word was in 
daily use in the public papers ; in fact, I took it out of the 
newspaper of that morning. On another occasion, out of 
fourteen candidates for the office of Principal teacher of a 
boys' Grammar school, four defined "friable" as that 
which can be fried ; several did not know at all the mean- 
ing of "hibernating," and one, the successful candidate, 
said it meant " relating to Ireland." By " successful " can- 
didate, I mean the one who got the vote of the Directors I 



188 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

This sober scrutiny into any one's knowledge of the 
meaning of words in common use, is one of the most reli- 
able tests of his general intellectual progress and culti- 
vation. It is one of the means by which in many city 
schools it is customary to test a candidate's fitness for 
promotion. To show how little people generally, and even 
teachers, are aware of the extent to which children mis- 
conceive the meaning of words in common use, I have 
transcribed a few examples from an examination of the 
kind which I once held. The definitions which I am 
about to quote were not the work of oral confusion and 
haste, but were given in writing, in circumstances of entire 
quietude and ample deliberation. The average age of 
the candidates, on the occasion referred to, was fourteen 
years and ten months, and no one of them was by law 
under thirteen years. 

Stature — A picture ; " I saw a stature of Washington." 
Fabulous — Full of threads; "Silk is fabulous." 
Accession — The act of eating a great deal; "John got 

very sick after dinner by accession." 
Atonement — A small insect; "Queen Mab was pulled 
by little atonements." Sound, [orthodox] ; " They 
went to the church of the Atonement." 
Auxiliary — To form; "The gardener did auxiliary his 

garden." 
Ingredient — A native-born; "Tobacco is an ingre- 
dient of this country." 
Fragment — Sweetmeats; "It was a fragment." 
Develop — To swallow up ; " God sent a whale to develop 
Jonah." 



ATTENTION. 189 

Exotic — Relating to a government; "Some countries 
have a very exotic government." Patriotic; "He 
was exotic in the cause of Independence." Absolute; 
"The government of Turkey is exotic." Standing 
out; "The company were exotic." 
Circumference — Distance through the middle. Distance 
around the middle of the outside. 

Callous — Something which cannot be effected ; " That 
America should gain her independence was supposed 
to be callous." 

Mobility — Belonging to the people; "The mobility of 
St. Louis has greatly increased." 

Anomalous — Powerful; "His speech was considered 
anomalous." 

Adequate — A land animal; "An elephant is an ade- 
quate." 

Transition — ThQ act of transcribing; "The transition 
of that book was gaining ground in the public mind." 

Gregarious — Pertaining to idols ; " The Sandwich Is- 
lands worship gregarious." Pertaining to an oak; 
"The Druids were noted for their gregarious exer- 
cises." Consisting of grain. Grass-eating. Full of 
talk. Full of color. 

Propensity — Dislike ; " He had a propensity to study." 

Artificially — Belonging to flowers. 

Fluctuation — coming in great numbers ; " There was 
a great fluctuation of emigrants." Setting on fire. 
Beating. 

Odium — That you have a great tact at anything; 
"Your odium is very great." A poisonous herb. 



190 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Pertaining to song ; " He was an odium writer." A 
sweet smell ; " The odium of new-mown hay." 

Transverse — To turn over; "Transverse that bucket 
and see what is in it." To change from verse ; " Some 
writers change books from transverse to verse." To 
verse again ; " He transversed his copy." To spread 
abroad ; " They transverse the Bible." 

Utility — Relating to the soil ; " The ground it remark- 
able for its utility." 

Quadruple — Relating to birds; "There was a number 
of quadruple." 

Alternate — Not ternate. 

Menace — A tare in the flesh ; " The dog caused a men- 
ace in John's arm." 

Yital — Relating to death; "Vital spark of heavenly 
flame." 

Intrinsic — not trinsic. Weak, feeble; "He was a very 
intrinsic old man." 

Subservient — One opposed to the upholding of servants. 
Stubborn ; " On account of the boy being subservient 
he was turned out of school." 

Perfidy — Trust ; not to cheat ; " Such a man is perfidy ; 
that is, everything can be trusted to him." Acces- 
sible ; " Some persons have a great deal of perfidy." 

Access — Intermission ; " Joseph had access of his teacher 
to go into the room." 

Vicinity — In the same direction; "Pekin is in the 
vicinity of Philadelphia." 

Subsequent — Preceding ; " The subsequent chapter." 

Infectious — To make fectious. 



ATTENTION. 191 

Exquisite — To be in a quisitive manner. To help. To 
find out. Talkative. Not required. 

Mingle — To tear in pieces. 

Deride — To ride down. 

Manifold — Made by the hand. Pertaining to man ; 
" Forgive our manifold sins." 

I have failed entirely in the general drift of this chapter, 
if I have not made it obvious that the principle which 
I have been attempting to illustrate is one of singularly 
pervading influence, and of most various and manifold 
applications. The subject is indeed eminently suggestive. 
One single additional line of illustration, however, 
must suflice. I refer to the application of this principle 
to what may be called the incidentals of teaching and 
training. 

A child, for instance, should not only " spell out of book," 
as it is called, but his attention should by some means be 
directed to the way in which words are spelled. He should 
be accustomed to form, as it were, a mental image of each 
word, to think of it as having a particular form and ap- 
pearance, so that his eye will detect instantly a wanting 
or an excrescent letter, just as he sees a wen, a defective 
limb, or a distorted feature on the person of an acquaint- 
ance. Only fire his young ambition with the aim to spell 
well, and quicken his attention to the way in which words 
are spelled, and every time he reads a book he receives 
incidentally a lesson in spelling. 

A child should have stated exercises and systematic in- 
structions in the art of reading. But quite as much im- 
provement in this important and too much neglected 



192 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

accomplishment may be gained by not allowing children at 
any time to read in an improper manner. Every demon- 
stration at the blackboard, every text or hymn repeated 
from memory, every recitation in arithmetic, grammar, or 
geography, every exercise of every kind in which the 
voice is used and words are uttered, may be made an inci- 
dental lesson in reading. By being never allowed to pro- 
nounce words incorrectly, to utter them in a low or drawl- 
ing manner, or to crowd and overlap them, as it were, one 
upon the other, the ear becomes accustomed to the correct 
sounds of the language, and immediately detects any 
variation from its accustomed standard. By thus insisting, 
in every vocal exercise, upon the full and correct pronun- 
ciation of the elementary sounds of the language, more 
may be done to make good readers and speakers than by 
all the pronouncing dictionaries and elocution books in 
print. 

Let a child by all means take lessons in writing. Let 
him learn plain text, German text, round hand, running 
hand, back hand, and the flourishes. But if he is to be- 
come rapidly master of that truly beautiful and most use- 
ful accomplishment, let the teacher insist upon his always 
attending to his manner of writing, and always writing as 
well as he can. Whether he writes a composition, a sketch, 
a letter, whenever for any purpose he puts pen to paper, 
let him be required to form each letter distinctly, to write 
it gracefully, and to give to his exercise a neat and elegant 
appearance. Teach him to think of a crooked line or a 
blotted page as of an untied shoe, or a dirty face. By 
thus making every written exercise an exercise in writing, 



ATTENTION. 193 

his progress will be increased beyond your expectations, 
and you will soon see him looking with pleasure at the 
clean and symmetrical forms which flow so gracefully from 
his pen, as he goes from line to line over the virgin page, 
no half-formed or misshapen letters to embarrass, but all 
in every part as elegantly written as it is easily read. 

Grammar should no doubt be taught by text-book and 
in stated lessons. The parts of speech, the conjugations 
and declensions, syntax and parsing, must all be systemat- 
ically conned, the rules and definitions committed to mem- 
ory, and the judgment exercised upon their application. 
At the same time every recitation of a child, as Avell as all 
his conversation, ought to be made an incidental and un- 
conscious lesson in grammar. Only never allow him to 
use unchallenged an incorrect or ungrammatical expression, 
train his ear to detect and revolt at it, as at a discordant 
note in music, let him if possible hear nothing but sterling, 
honest English, and he will then learn grammar to some 
purpose. If, on the contrary, he is allowed to recite and 
to talk in whatever language comes uppermost, and to hear 
continually those around him reciting and talking in a 
similar manner, he may parse till he is blind without 
learning " to speak and write the English language cor- 
rectly." Banish from the nursery, the school-room, and 
the play-ground, incorrect and ungrammatical expressions, 
and you do more than can be done in all other ways to 
preserve " the well of English undefiled." 

Young persons need systematic instructions in the prin- 
ciples w^hich should govern their conduct. They need not 
indeed be troubled with the more abstruse c^uestions in the 
17 



194 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

. theory of morals. But the great obvious rules of duty 
should be taught them, in a systematic manner, by a com- 
petent instructor. But that man would be thought little 
acquainted with the influences which go to mould and 
form the character, who should suppose the matter ended 
here. The doctrines inculcated in the lesson, must be 
carried out and applied in all the petty incidents of the 
day. Not an hour passes in a large family or a school, 
without an occurrence involving some principle in morals. 
A boy of moderate talents, notwithstanding all his exer- 
tions, is eclipsed by one more gifted, and he is tempted to 
envy. Imagining himself aggrieved or insulted by his 
fellows, he burns for revenge. Overtaken in a fault and 
threatened with punishment, he is tempted to lie. Misled 
by the opinion of others, or esteeming some rule of his 
teachers harsh and unnecessary, he is inclined to disobey. 
These and a hundred other instances which might be 
named, will suggest to the thoughtful parent or teacher so 
many opportunities for giving incidentally the most im- 
portant practical instruction in morals. 

In these and the manifold other illustrations which 
might be given, the essential point is to quicken and keep 
alive the attention. Whatever be the subject of study, 
and whether the instructions be direct or incidental, let 
children be preserved from attending to it in a sluggish, 
listless, indifferent manner. The subject of study, in the 
case of young persons, is often of less importance than the 
manner of study. I have been led sometimes to doubt 
the value of many of the inventions for facilitating the 
acquisition of knowledge by children. That knowledge 



ATTENTION. 195 

the acquisition of which costs no labor, will not be likely to 
make a deep impression, or to remain long upon the mem- 
ory. It is by labor that the mind strengthens and grows : 
and while care should be taken not to overtask it by ex- 
ertions beyond its strength, yet let it never be forgotten 
that mere occupation of the mind, even with useful and 
proper objects, is not the precise aim of education. The 
educator aims, not to make learned boys, but able men. 
To do this, he must tax their powers. He must rouse 
them to manly exertion. He must teach them to think, 
to discriminate, to digest what they have received, to work. 
Every day there must be the glow of hard work, — not the 
exhaustion and languor which arise from too protracted 
confinement to study, — which have the same debilitating 
effect upon the mind that a similar process has upon the 
body, — but vigorous and hardy labor, such as wakens the 
mind from its lethargy, summons up the resolution and 
the will, and puts the whole internal man into a state of 
determined and positive activity. The boy in such a case 
feels that he is at work. He feels, too, that he is gaining 
something more than knowledge. He is gaining power. 
He is growing in strength. He grapples successfully to- 
day with a difficulty that would have staggered him yes- 
terday. There is no mistaking this process ; and no matter 
what the subject of study, the intellectual development 
what it gives, is worth infinitely more than all that vague, 
floating kind of knowledge sometimes sought after, which 
seems to be imbibed somehow from the atmosphere of the 
school-room, as it certainly evaporates the moment a boy 
enters the atmosphere of men and of active life. 



XXVII. 

GAINIJVfG THE ATTENTION. 

THE teacher who fails to get the attention of his 
scholars, fails totally. The pupils may perhaps learn 
something, because they may give the lesson some study 
at home, under the direction of their parents. But they 
learn nothing from the teacher. He is really no teacher, 
though he may occupy the teacher's seat. There is, and 
there can be, no teaching, where the attention of the 
scholar is not secured. Gaining the attention is an indis- 
pensable condition to the thing called teaching. Not, 
however, the only indispensable thing. We have seen a 
class wrought by special tricks and devices to the highest 
pitch of excited attention, — fairly panting with eagerness, 
all eyes and ears, on the very tiptoe of aroused mental 
activity, — yet learning nothing. The teacher had the 
knack of stirring them up and lashing them into a half 
frenzy of excited expectation, without having any substan- 
tial knowledge wherewith to reward their eagerness. With 
all his one-sided skill, he was but a mountebank. To real, 
successful teaching, there must be these two things, namely, 
the ability to hold the minds of the children, and the 
ability to pour into the minds thus presented sound and 
seasonable instruction. Lacking the latter ability, your 

196 



GAINING THE ATTENTION. 197 

pupil goes away with his vessel unfilled. Lacking the 
former, you only pour water upon the ground. 

How shall the teacher secure attention ? 

In the first place, let him make up his mind that he 
will have it. This is half the battle. Let him settle it 
with himself, that until he does this, he is doing nothing ; 
that without the attention of his scholars, he is no more a 
teacher, than is the chair he occupies. If he is not plus, 
he is zero, if not actually minus. With this truth fully 
realized, he will come before his class resolved to have a 
hearing ; and this very resolution, written as it will be all 
over him, will have its efiect upon his scholars. Children 
are quick to discern the mental attitude of a teacher. 
They know, as if by instinct, whether he is in earnest or 
not, and in all ordinary cases they yield without dispute 
to a claim thus resolutely put. 

This, then, is the first duty of the teacher in this mat- 
ter. He must go to his class with the resolute determi- 
nation of making every scholar feel his presence all the 
time. The moment any scholar shows that the conscious- 
ness of his teacher^s presence is not on his mind, as a 
restraining power, something is wrong. The first step to- 
wards producing that consciousness, as an abiding influ- 
ence on the minds of the scholars, is for the teacher to 
determine in his own mind and bring it about. Without 
being arrogant, without being dictatorial, without being 
or doing anything that is disagreeable or unbecoming, 
he must yet make up his mind to put forth in the class 
a distinct power of self-assertion. He must determine to 
17* 



198 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

make them feel that he is there, that he is there all the 
time, that he is there to every one of them. 

In the next place, the teacher must not disappoint the 
attention which his manner has challenged. He must 
have something valuable to communicate to the expectant 
minds before him. He must be thoroughly prepared in 
the lesson, so that the pupils shall feel that they are learn- 
ing from him. His lips must keep knowledge. The hu- 
man heart thirsts for knowledge. This is one of its natural 
instincts. It is indeed often much perverted, and many 
are to be found who even show aversion to being instructed. 
Yet the normal condition of things is otherwise, and noth- 
ing is more common than to see children hanging with 
fondness around any one who has something to tell them. 
Let the teacher then be sure to have something to say, as 
well as determined to say it. 

In the third place, the teacher must have his knowledge 
perfectly at command. It must be on the tip of his 
tongue. If he hesitates, and stops to think, or to look in 
his book for the purpose of hunting up what he has to tell 
them, he will be very apt to lose his chance. Teaching 
children, particularly young children, is like shooting 
birds on the wing. The moment your bird is in sight, you 
must fire. The moment you have the child's eye, be ready 
to speak. This readiness of utterance is a matter to be 
cultivated. The ripest scholars are often sadly deficient 
in it. The very habit of profound study is apt to induce 
the opposite quality to readiness. A teacher who is con- 
scious of this defect, must resolutely set himself to resist 
it and overcome it. He can do so, if he will. But it 
requires resolution and practice. 



GAINING THE ATTENTION. 199 

In the fourth place, the teacher must place himself so 
that every pupil in the class is within the range of his 
vision. It is not uncommon to see a teacher pressing close 
up to the scholars in the centre of the class, so that those 
at the right and left ends are out of his sight ; or if he 
turns his face to those on one side, he at the same time 
turns his back to those on the other. Always sit or stand 
where you can all the while see the face of every pupil. 
I have, hundreds of times, seen the whole character of 
the instruction and discipline of a class changed by the 
observance of this simple rule. 

Another rule is to use your eyes quite as much as your 
tongue. If you want your class to look at you, you must 
look at them. The eye has a magic power. It wins, it 
fascinates, it guides, it rewards, it punishes, it controls. 
You must learn how to see every child all the time. Some 
teachers seem to be able to see only one scholar at a time. 
This will never do. While you are giving this absorbed, 
undivided attention to one, all the rest are running wild. 
Neither will it do for the teacher to be looking about 
much, to see what is going on among the other classes in 
the room. Your scholars' eyes will be very apt to follow 
yours. You are the engineer, they are the passengers. If 
you run ofl'the track, they must do likewise. Nor must your 
eye be occupied with the book, hunting up question and 
answer, nor dropj^ed to the floor in excessive modesty. All 
the power of seeing that you have is needed for looking 
earnestly, lovingly, without interruption, into the faces 
and eyes of your pupils. 

Eut for the observance of this rule, another is indispen- 



200 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

sable. You must learn to teach without book. Perhaps 
you cannot do this absolutely. But the nearer you can 
approach to it, the better. Thorough preparation, of 
course, is the secret of this power. Some teachers think 
they have prepared a lesson when they have gone over it 
once, and studied out all the answers. There could not be 
a greater mistake. This is only the first step in the prep- 
aration. You might as Avell think that you have learned 
the Multiplication Table, and are prepared to teach it, 
when you have gone over it once and seen by actual count 
that the figures are all right, and you know where to put 
your finger on them when required. You are prepared 
to teach a lesson when you have all the facts and ideas in 
it at your tongue's end, so that you can go through them 
all, in proper order, without once referring to the book. 
Any preparation short of this will not do, if you want to 
command attention. Once prepare a lesson in this way, 
and it will give you such freedom in the art of teaching, 
and you will experience such a pleasure in it, that you 
will never want to relapse into the old indolent habit. 



XXVIII. 

COUNSELS. 

1. To a Young Teacher. 

YOU are about to assume the charge of a class in the 
school under my care. Allow me, in a spirit of 
frankness, to make to you a brief statement of some of 
the aims of the institution, and of the principles by which 
we are guided in their prosecution. 

1. " Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain 
that build it." I have no professional conviction more 
fixed and abiding than this, that no persons more need the 
direct, special, continual guidance of the Holy Spirit than 
those who undertake to mould and discipline the youthful 
mind. No preparation for this office is complete which 
does not include devout prayer for that wisdom which 
Cometh from above. If any one possession, more than an- 
other, is the direct gift of the Almighty, it would seem to 
be that of knowledge. The teacher, therefore, of all men, 
is called upon to look upwards to a source that is higher 
than himself. He needs light in his own mind ; he should 
not count it misspent labor to ask for light to be given to 
the minds of his scholars. There is a Teacher infinitely 

201 



202 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

wiser and more skilful than any human teacher. The 
instructor must be strangely blind to the resources of his 
profession, who fails to resort habitually to that great, ple- 
nary, unbounded source of light and knowledge. While, 
therefore, we aim in this school to profit by all subsidiary 
and subordinate methods and improvements in the art of 
teaching, we first of all seek the aid of our Heavenly 
Father ; we ask wisdom of Him who " giveth liberally and 
upbraideth not." This, then, is the first principle that 
governs us in the work here assigned us. The fear of God 
is the beginning of knowledge. We who are teachers en- 
deavor to show that we ourselves fear God, and we inculcate 
the fear of Him as the first and highest duty of our schol- 
ars ; and in every plan and effort to guide the young 
minds committed to us, we ourselves look for guidance to 
the only unerring source of light. 

2. In proportion to the implicitness with which we rely 
upon divine aid, should be the diligence with which we 
use all the human means within our reach. It should 
therefore, in the second place, be the aim of the teachers 
of this school to acquaint themselves diligently with the 
most approved methods of teaching. No teachers will be 
retained who do not keep themselves well posted in the 
literature of their profession, and who are not found con- 
tinually aiming at self-improvement. In whatever school 
of whatever country, any branch is taught by better meth- 
ods than those practised here, it should be the duty of a 
teacher in this school to search it out, and to profit by the 
discovery. Improvement comes by comparison. The 
man, or the institution, that fails to profit by the experience 



COUNSELS. 203 

of others, is not wise, I hold it to be the duty of every 
teacher of this school to be habitually conversant with 
the educational journals of the day, and with the standard 
works on the theory of teaching, and to lose no oppor- 
tunity for personal observation of the methods of others. 
I have often noticed, with equal pain and commiseration, 
that young teachers, after having once finished their pre- 
liminary studies and obtained a situation, are thereupon 
apparently quite content, making no further effort at im- 
provement, but settling down for life in an inglorious me- 
diocrity. The best teachers in this school are expected to 
be better teachers next year than they are now, — Avith 
ampler stores of knowledge, and a happier faculty for 
communicating it. This, then, is our second aim in this 
school. We aim to have teachers thoroughly posted in 
regard to the theory and the methods of teaching, prepared 
to ride upon the advance wave of every real improvement 
in the art. 

3. I should, however, fail entirely to convey my meaning, 
were I to lead you to suppose that we expect to accomplish 
our ends mainly by fine-spun theories. I have no faith in 
any theory of education, which does not include, as one of 
its leading elements, hard wo7'k. The teachers of this school 
expect to work hard, and we expect the scholars to work 
hard. We have no royal road to learning. Any knowl- 
edge, the acquisition of which costs nothing, is usually 
worth nothing. The mind, equally with the body, grows 
by labor. If some stufiing process could be invented, by 
which knowledge could be forced into a mind perfectly 
passive, the knowledge so acquired would be worthless to 



204 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM, 

its possessor, and would soon pass away, leaving the mind 
as blank as it was before. Knowledge, to be of any value, 
must be assimilated, as bodily food is. Teaching is essen- 
tially a co-operative act. The mind of the teacher and the 
mind of the scholar must both act, and must act together, 
in intellectual co-operation and sympathy, if there is to be 
any true mental growth. Teaching is not merely hearing 
lessons. It is not mere talking. It is something more 
than mere telling. It is causing a child to know. It is 
awakening attention, and then satisfying it. It is an out- 
and-out live process. The moment the mind of the teacher 
or the mind of the scholar flags, real teaching ceases. 
This, then, is our third aim. We aim in this school to 
accomplish resvilts, not by fanciful theories, but by bona 
fide hard work, — by keeping teachers and scholars, while 
at their studies, wide awake and full of life ; not by ex- 
hausting drudgery, nor by fitful, irregular, spasmodic ex- 
ertions, but by steady, persevering, animated, straight- 
forward work. 

4. A fourth aim which we have steadily before us, is to 
make tlwrough work of whatever acquisition we attempt. 
A little knowledge, well learned and truly digested, and 
made a part of the pupil's own intellectual stores, is worth 
more to him than any amount of facts loosely and indis- 
criminately brought together. In intellectual, as in other 
tillage, the true secret of thrift is to plough deep, not to 
skim over a large surface. The prevailing tendency at 
this time, in systems of education, is unduly to multiply 
studies. So many new sciences are being brought within 
the pale of popular knowledge, that it is no longer possible. 



COUNSELS. 205 

in a school like this, to embrace within its course of 
study all the subjects which it is practicable and desirable 
for people generally to know. Through the whole ency- 
clopaedia of arts and sciences, there is hardly one which 
has not its advocates, and which has not strong claims to 
recognition. The teacher is simply infatuated who at- 
tempts to embrace them all in his curriculum. He thereby 
puts himself under an absolute necessity of being super- 
ficial, and he generates in his scholars pretension and con- 
ceit. Old James Koss, the grammarian, famous as a 
teacher in Philadelphia more than half a century ago, had 
on his sign simply these words, ** Greek and Latin taught 
here." Assuredly I would not advocate quite so rigid an 
exclusion as that, nor, if limited to only two studies, would 
it be those. . But I have often thought Mr. Koss's adver- 
tisement suggestive. Better even that extreme than the 
encyclopaedic system which figures so largely on some cir- 
culars. Mr. Ross indeed taught nothing but Latin and 
Greek. But he taught these languages better probably 
than they have ever been taught on this continent ; and 
any two branches thoroughly mastered are of more ser- 
vice to the pupil than twenty branches known imperfectly 
and superficially. A limited field, then, and thorough 
work. This is our fourth aim. 

5. As a fifth aim, we endeavor, in the selection of sub- 
jects of study, not to allow the common English branches, 
as they are called, to be shoved aside. To read well, to 
write a good hand, to be expert in arithmetic, to have 
such a knowledge of geography and history as to read in- 
telligently what is going on and the world, to have such a 



206 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

knowledge of one's own language as to use it correctly 
and purely in speaking and composition, — these are attain- 
ments to be postponed to no others. These are points of 
primary importance, to be aimed at by every one, whatever 
else he may omit. 

6. We aim, in the sixth place, to mark the successive 
parts of the course of study by well defined limits. There 
are in the course of study successive stages of progress, 
and these stages are made as clear and precise as it is pos- 
sible to make them ; and no pupil is allowed to go forward 
until the ground behind is thoroughly mastered. At the 
same time, these stages in study should be kept all the 
while before the minds of the pupils as goals to be aimed 
at. There are, for this purpose, at briefly recurring inter- 
vals, examinations for promotion. While no pupil is per- 
mitted to go forward, except as the result of a rigorous 
examination, the idea of an advance should, if joossible, 
never be allowed to be absent from his thoughts. That 
scholar should be counted worthy of highest honor, not 
who stands highest in a particular room, but who by suc- 
cessful examinations can pass most rapidly from room to 
room. That teacher is considered most successful, not 
who retains most pupils, but who in a given time pushes 
most pupils forward into a higher room. We want no 
scholar to stand still for a single week. Motion, progress, 
definite achievement, must be the order of the day. 

7. We aim, in the seventh place, to cultivate in every 
pupil a habit of attention and observation. Youth is the 
time when the senses should be most assiduously trained. 
The young should be taught to see for themselves, to 



COUNSELS. 207 

ascertain the qualities of objects by the use of their own 
eyes and hands, to notice whether a thing is distant and 
how far distant it is, whether it is heavy and how heavy, 
whether it has color and what color, whether it has form 
and what form. They should learn to study real things 
by actually noticing them with their own senses, and then 
learning to apply the right words to the knowledge so 
acquired. We aim to apply this habit of observation in all 
the branches of study, so that in every stage of progress 
the scholar shall know, not merely the names of things, 
but the things themselves. In other words, we would cul- 
tivate real, as well as verbal knowledge, and aim to awaken 
in every pupil an active, inquiring, observant state of 
mind. 



2. To a New Pupil. 

You have just been admitted to the privileges of this 
institution, and are about to enter here upon a course of 
study. The occasion is one eminently suited for serious 
reflection. At the close of a school career it is difficult 
not to reflect. Thoughts upon one's course will, at such a 
time, force themselves upon us. But then it is too late. 
The good we might have achieved, is beyond our grasp, 
and its contemplation is profitable only as a legitimate 
topic of contrition. How much wiser and more profit- 
able to anticipate the serious judgment Avhicli sooner or 
later we must pass upon our actions, and so to shape our 
conduct in advance, that the retrospect, when it comes, 
may be a source of joy and congratulation, rather than of 



208 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

shame aud repentance. How much wiser to direct our 
bark to some definite and well selected channel, than to 
float at random along the current of events, the sport of 
every idle wave. Men are divided into two classes, — 
those who control their own destiny, doing what they mean 
to do, living according to a plan which they prefer and 
prepare, and those who are controlled by circumstances, 
who have a vague purpose of doing something or being 
somebody in the world, but leave the means to chance. 
The season of youth generally determines to which of these 
classes you will ultimately belong. It is here, at school, 
that you decide whether, when you come to man's estate, 
you will be a governing man, or whether you will be a 
mere aimless driveller. Those who at the beginning of a 
course in school make to themselves a distinct aim, towards 
which day after day they work their course, undiscouraged 
by defeat, unseduced by ease or the temptation of a tem- 
porary pleasure, not only win the immediate objects of 
pursuit, but gain for themselves those habits of aiming, of 
perseverance, of self-control, which will make them here- 
after controlling and governing men. Those, on the con- 
trary, who enter upon an academic career with an in- 
definite purpose of studying after a fashion, whenever it 
is not too hot, or too cold, or the lessons are not too hard, 
or there is nothing special going on to distract the atten- 
tion, or who are content to swim along lazily with the 
multitude, trusting to the good-nature of the teacher, to an 
occasional deception, or to the general chapter of accidents, 
for escape from censure, and for such an amount of profi- 
ciency as on the whole will pass muster with friends or the 



COUNSELS. 209 

public, — depend upon it, such youths are doomed, inevi- 
tably doomed, all their days, to be nobodies, or worse. 

Let me, then, my young friend, as preliminary to your 
entering upon the duties before you, call to your mind 
some of those things, which, as an intelligent and respon- 
sible being, you should deliberately aim to follow or to 
avoid while in this school. In the counsels which I am 
going to give you, I shall make no attempt to say what is 
new or striking. My aim will be rather to recall to your 
memory some few of those familiar maxims, in which you 
have been, I dare say, often instructed elsewhere. 

1. First of all, remember that men always, by a neces- 
sary law, fall below the point at which they aim. You 
well understand that if a projectile be hurled in the direct 
line of any elevated object, the force of gravity will cause 
the projectile to deflect from the line of direction, and this 
deflection and curvature will be great in proportion to the 
distance of the object to be reached. Hence, in gunnery, 
the skilful marksman invariably takes aim above the 
point which he expects to hit. At certain distances, he 
will aim 45° above the horizon at Avhat is really but 30° 
above it. So, in moral subjects, there is unfortunately a 
native and universal tendency downwards, which deflects 
us out of the line in which good resolutions would propel 
us. You aim to be distinguished, and you turn out only 
meritorious. You aim to be meritorious, and you fall into 
the multitude. You are content with being of the multi- 
tude, and you fall out of your class entirely. So also, as 
in physical projectiles, the extent of your departure from 

the right line is measured by the distance of the objects 

18* 



210 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

at which you aim. You resolve to avoid absolutely and 
entirely certain practices for a day or a week, and you can 
perhaps keep very close to the mark. But who can hold 
himself up to an exact fulfilment of his intentions for a 
whole term ? I do not wish to discourage you. The drift 
of my argument is, not that you should make no aim, but 
that you should fix your aim high, and that you should 
then keep yourself up to your good resolutions, as long 
and as closely as you possibly can. 

2. In the next place, remember that no excellence is 
ever attained without self-denial. Wisdom's ways are 
indeed ways of pleasantness. The satisfaction of having 
done well and nobly is of a certain ravishing kind, far 
surpassing other enjoyments. But to obtain this high and 
satisfying pleasure, many minor and incompatible pleas- 
ures must be foregone. You cannot have the pleasure of 
being a first-rate scholar, and at the same time have your 
full swing of fun. I am not opposed to fun. I like it 
myself. No one enjoys it more. Nor do I think the ex- 
ercise and enjoyment of it incompatible with the highest 
scholastic excellence. But there is a place for all things, 
and school is not the place for fun. If you enjoy in mod- 
eration out of school the relaxation and refreshment which 
jokes, wit, and pleasantry give, you will be all the more likely 
to grapple successfully with the serious employments which 
await you here. Still do not forget that your employments 
here are serious. Study is a sober business. If you would 
acquire really useful knowledge, you must be willing to work. 
You must make up your mind to say " no " to the thou- 
sand opportunities and temptations to frivolous behavior 



COUNSELS. 211 

that will beset you in school. You must not be con- 
tent with being studious and orderly merely when the eye 
of authority is upon you. This is to be simply an eye- 
servant and a hypocrite. To have a little pleasantry in 
the school-room, to j^erpetrate or to join in some witty 
practical joke, may seem to you comparatively harmless. 
So it would be but for its expense. You buy it at the cost 
of benefits which no money can measure, and no future 
time can replace. There are seasons of the year when the 
farmer may indulge in relaxation, — may go abroad on 
excursions of pleasure, or may saunter away the time in 
comparative idleness at home. But in the few precious 
weeks of seedtime, every day, every hour is of moment. 
This is your seedtime. Every hour of school-time that 
you waste in trifling is an injury and a loss to your future. 
Remember, then, that you cannot reach high excellence in 
school, or that pure and noble enjoyment, which is its 
exceeding great reward, without self-denial. Resolve, 
therefore, here and now, steadfastly, immovably, to say " no " 
to everything in school, no matter how innocent in itself, 
which shall interfere with the progress of study for a 
single moment. If you make such a fixed resolution, and 
live up to it, you will soon be surprised to find how easy 
and pleasant the discipline of school has become. 

3. Among the mischievous fallacies of young persons at 
school, I know none that work more to their own disad- 
vantage than the opinion that a particular teacher is pre- 
judiced against them. Against this feeling it seems im- 
possible to reason. When once scholars have it fairly in 
their heads that a certain teacher is partial, in whatever 



212 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

relates to their standing, I have been almost forced to the 
conclusion that it is best not to attempt reasoning with 
them. Under such feelings, indeed, by a singular freak 
of human nature, scholars are often driven to do, in sheer 
bravado or defiance, the very things which they imagine 
to be unjustly imputed to them. Allow me, my young 
friend, to ask you candidly and in all seriousness to turn 
this matter over in your own mind. What adequate mo- 
tive can you imagine for a teacher's marking you other- 
wise than impartially ? Every teacher has an interest in 
having as many high marks and as few demerits under 
his signature as possible. It is not to his credit that he 
should be unable to maintain order without blackening his 
roll with bad marks. A class roll filled with O's is not 
the kind of evidence a teacher covets as to his skill in 
teaching. Notice the intercourse between the teachers and 
those scholars who are admitted on all hands to be strictly 
and conscientiously correct in their behavior. See what 
a pleasure it afibrds the instructor to have to deal with 
such pupils. See what a satisfaction the teacher experi- 
ences when, at the close of the day, there is not a demerit 
mark on his book. Judge, then, whether it is not likely 
to be a self-denial and a cross to him, when a sense of duty 
compels him to do otherwise. Be slow, therefore, to im- 
pute bad marks to injustice, or ill nature. No man of 
course is infallible, and teachers make mistakes as well as 
other people. But the temptations to do intentional wrong 
are, in this case, all the other way. 

4. Closely connected with the habit just mentioned is 
the disposition to neglect particular branches of study. 



COUNSELS. 213 

From disliking a teacher, the transition is easy to a dis- 
like for his department. Others again, without any per- 
sonal feeling in the case, think that they have a natural 
fitness for one class of studies, and an equally natural un- 
fitness for another class. So they content themselves with 
proficiency in that in which they already excel, and neg- 
lect that in which they are deficient, and which therefore 
they find difficult. Is this wise? The branches which 
you find difficult, are precisely those in which you need an 
instructor. Besides, the object of education is to develop 
equally and harmoniously all your faculties. If the mem- 
ory, the reasoning faculty, the imagination, or any one 
power of the mind, is active far beyond the other powers, 
that surely is no reason for giving additional stimulus and 
growth in that direction. On the contrary, bend your 
main energies towards bringing forward your other facul- 
ties to an equal development. If you have a natural or 
acquired preference for mathematics, and a dislike for 
languages, the former study will take care of itself: bend 
all your energies to the latter. So, if languages are your 
choice, and mathematical study your aversion, take hold 
of the odious task with steady and sturdy endeavor, and 
you will soon convert it into a pleasure. The same is true 
of grammar, of geography, of history, of composition, of 
rhetoric, of mental and moral science, of elocution, — of 
every branch. If you are wise, you will give your chief 
attention in school to those branches for which you feel 
the least inclination, and in which you find it most diffi- 
cult to excel. You should do so, because, in the first 
place, this failure and disinclination, in nine cases out of 



214 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

ten, grow out of defective training heretofore, and not 
from any defect in your mental constitution ; and, secondly, 
if your natural constitution should be, as in some cases it is, 
one-sided and exceptional, your aim should be to correct and 
cure, not to aggravate, the defects of nature. This advice, 
you will observe, relates to your course in school, not to 
your choice of a profession in life. When your career in 
school is finished, and you are about to select a profession, 
follow by all means the bent of your genius. Do that for 
which you have the greatest natural or acquired aptitude. 
But here, the case is different. Your aim in school is to 
develop your powers, — to grow into an accomplished and 
capable man, — to acquire complete command of all the 
mental resources God has given you. 

5. There is a practice, common to school-life everywhere, 
known by the not very dignified name of cheating. There 
is, I fear, among young people generally, while at school, 
an erroneous and mischievous state of opinion on this sub- 
ject. Deception in regard to your lessons is not viewed, 
as it should be, in the light of a serious moral delinquency. 
An ingenuous youth, who would scorn to steal, and scorn 
to lie anywhere else than at school, makes no scruple to 
deceive a teacher. Is honesty a thing of place and time ? 
I do not say, I would not trust at my money-drawer the 
boy who has been cheating at his lessons, because a boy 
may have been led into the latter delinquency by a false 
notion of right, which as yet has not aflTected his integrity 
in matters of business. But this I do say. Cheating at 
school blunts the moral sense ; it impairs the sense of per- 
sonal honor ; it breaks down the outworks of integrity ; 



COUNSELS. 215 

it leads by direct and easy steps to that grosser cheating 
which ends in the penitentiary. 

On this subject, I once had a most painful experience. 
A boy left school with as fair a character for honesty as 
many others against whom nothing can be said except that 
they do sometimes practise deceit in regard to their lessons. 
I really believed him to be an honest boy, and recom- 
mended him as such. By means of the recommendation, he 
obtained in a large store a responsible post connected with 
the receipt and payment of money. His employer was 
pleased with his abilities, and disposed to give him rapid 
promotion. After a few months, I inquired after him, and 
found that he had been detected in forcing his balances ! 
I do verily believe, the dishonest purpose, which led to this 
pecuniary fraud, grew directly out of a facility at decep- 
tion acquired at school. He had cheated his teacher ; he 
had cheated his father ; he had obtained a fictitious aver- 
age ; he had gained a standing and credit in school not 
justly his due; why should he not exercise the same 
ingenuity in improving his pecuniary resources? 

Independently of the moral effect of these deceptive 
practices upon your own character, is there not in the acts 
themselves an inherent meanness and baseness, from which 
a pure-minded youth would instinctively recoil ? Is there 
not something false and rotten in the prevailing sentiment 
on this subject among young persons at school ? When 
by some convenient fiction you reach a higher standard 
than your merits entitle you to, is it not so far forth at the 
expense of some more conscientious competitor ? And, 
after all,- when you deceive a teacher into the belief that 



216 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

you are studying when you are not, that you know a thing 
when you do not know it, that you wrote a composition, 
or executed a drawing, which was done by some one else, 
— whom do you cheat but yourself? You may deceive 
the teacher, but the loss is yours. 

6. If there could be such a thing as an innocent crime, 
I would say it was that of talking in school. There can 
hardly be nanfed a more signal instance of an act so per- 
fectly innocent in itself, becoming so seriously blame- 
worthy purely and solely by circumstances. I believe I 
express the common opinion of all who have had any ex- 
perience in the matter, when I say that three fourths of all 
the intentional disorder, and at least nine tenths of all the 
actual interruptions to study, grow out of the practice of 
unlicensed talking. And yet this is the very last thing 
which young persons will admit into their serious, practical 
convictions as being an evil and a wrong. They may 
admit that they get bad marks by it ; that it brings them 
into trouble; but that it is really an evil, meriting the 
strictures with which the teacher visits it, is more than 
they believe. What deceives them is this. They call to 
mind the events of a particular hour. There was during 
that hour, according to their recollection, a general atten- 
tion to study, and no special disorder ; perhaps some three 
or four of the pupils noted for talking. This talking, too, 
may have been about the lesson, or at all events was not 
such as to distract very perceptibly the current of instruc- 
tion. Hence the inference that a moderate amount of 
talking, such as that was, is perfectly consistent with de- 
corum and progress. 



COUNSELS. 217 

So it is. But what is to secure this moderate amount? 
What right have you to talk that is not enjoyed by your 
neighbor ? If one may talk, so may all ; if one does it, 
unchecked, so will all, as you very well know. How is 
the teacher to know whether you are talking about the 
lesson, or about the last cricket-match? 

This is a perfectly plain question, and I press you to an 
answer. There is no practical medium between unlimited 
license to talk — against which you would yourself be 
the first to protest — and an entire prohibition. I put it 
to your conscience, whether you do not believe, were this 
rule strictly and in good faith observed, that the interests 
of the school, and your own interest, comfort, and honor, 
would be greatly promoted ? Is the inconvenience which 
this rule imposes so great, or your habit of self-indulgence 
so strong, that you cannot, or will not, forego a slight tem- 
porary gratification for so substantial and lasting a benefit? 

7. You will avoid much of the difiiculty of observing 
this rule, if you give heed to the next counsel which I 
have now to give, and that is, that you economize carefully 
your time in school. On this point some excellent and 
conscientious pupils occasionally err. They are very faith- 
ful in home preparation ; very attentive at lectures ; very 
industrious in discharging any set duty. But they have 
not yet learned the true secret of all economy, whether of 
time, money, or any other good, — namely, the knowing how 
to use well the odds and ends. Take care of the pence, 
was Franklin's motto. If you once have the secret of 
occupying usefully, in studious preparation, or in wise 
repetition, all those little intervals of interrupted instruc- 
19 



218 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

tion, which necessarily occur throughout the day, you will 
in the first place almost insure for yourself an entire 
freedom from demerit marks of every kind ; you will sec- 
ondly add materially to your intellectual progress ; and, 
lastly, you will acquire a habit of the utmost value in 
every station and walk in life ; and, depend upon it, the 
habits you acquire at school, are of all your acquisitions 
by far the most important. 

8. But I would be false to my most settled convictions, 
were I to stop here. I have been a teacher of the young 
nearly all my life, and as the result of such a life-long 
professional experience, I have no conviction more abiding 
than this, that the fear of God is the beginning of knowl- 
edge. I believe that mental growth is just as directly the 
gift of God as bodily growth ; that the healthy action of 
the mind is as much dependent on his good pleasure as 
the healthy action of the bodily functions. God has not 
only made one mind superior to another, but of two minds 
naturally equal, he can, at his sovereign pleasure, make 
one grow and expand more rapidly than another. As he 
can give symmetry and strength to your limbs, and clothe 
your features with beauty and grace, so he can make you 
quick of apprehension, clear of discernment, ready and 
tenacious to remember, delicate in your appreciation of 
what is beautiful. While, therefore, you are diligent in 
your studies, remember that the reward of your labor, 
after all, is the gift of God. You will neglect one essen- 
tial means of intellectual progress, if you neglect prayer. 
I mean, not prayer in general, but specific prayer for God's 
blessing on your studies ; prayer that God will bless your 



COUNSELS. 219 

efforts to learn. Keep your mind, while engaged in study, 
in a habitual state of expectancy, especially when grap- 
pling with intellectual difficulties, as if inwardly looking 
up for help to that all-knowing Spirit, who alone, of all 
beings, acts directly on our spirits. I cannot doubt that 
one who studies in such a frame of mind, will advance in 
his intellectual progress more rapidly for it. I have a 
most assured conviction that prayer is a direct and impor- 
tant means of mental growth. Not only will the fear of 
God restrain you from many of the usual hindrances to 
study, of which I have already spoken, but a truly devout 
spirit is the very best state of mind for learning, even for 
learning purely intellectual truth. 

There are other and higher motives, why you should 
cultivate, habitually, the fear of God. Of these motives, 
it is not my office to speak now. They are often pressed 
upon your attention. The one point to which I direct you 
now, is the importance of such a state of mind to your 
making the best, and surest, and noblest kind of mental 
growth. If you would grow rapidly in knowledge, grow 
symmetrically and beautifully, with all your faculties in 
harmonious preparation and dependence, fear God. Keep 
your spirit in habitual intercourse and communion with 
that Almighty Spirit who is the source of all knowledge 
and wisdom. In the school-room, at your desk, in your 
recitations, and your exercises of every kind, let the 
thought that the eye of a loving Father is upon you, dif- 
fuse habitually a calm and sweet peace through your 
spirit, and depend upon it, you will not find your mental 
vision dimmed by moving in so pure and serene an 



220 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

atmosphere. There are no quickeners to knowledge equal 
to love, reverence, and earnest prayer. 

Let me, in conclusion, tender you my best wishes for 
your success in the career now before you. That success de- 
pends, in no small degree, upon the feeling and spirit with 
which you begin. Only summon up your mind to a seri- 
ous and determined resolution at the outset ; aim high ; 
do not flinch at self-denial ; rise above the unworthy sus- 
picion that this or that teacher is unfair to you ; resist the 
disposition to shirk those studies that you find disagreeable 
or difficult ; keep clear of every kind and degree of trick- 
ery ; come straight up to a full and strict compliance with 
every rule ; lay your jjlans to occupy usefully each golden 
moment of leisure ; cultivate a constant sense of depen- 
dence upon God for success in study : and your success 
will be as certain as is the wish for it, which I once more, 
most respectfully and affectionately, tender you. 



3. To a Young Lady on Leaving a Boarding-School. 

You are about to leave school. The occasion is one 
certainly that cannot fail to awaken reflection. I suppose 
that no young lady, who had been at a place of education 
as long as you have been here, ever left it without serious 
thought. The excitement of the examination, the busy 
w^hirl of preparation for leaving, even the exhilarating 
anticipations of home-going, cannot entirely shut out from 
your mind the sober truth that the end of school-days is 
only the beginning of another career, — a career, the issue 



COUNSELS. 221 

of which you can neither foresee, nor can you be indifferent 
to it. Let us talk a little about this. 

The day on which a young man ends his College course 
is called, by an apparent misnomer, " Commencement " 
day ; that is, the day of commencing, or beginning. I 
understand very well that the name has a definite histori- 
cal origin, — that in the old English Colleges, from which 
our American Colleges were modelled, the young man, on 
this day, begins his career as a Bachelor of Arts. His 
academical rank " commences " and dates from this point. 
But there would be a beautiful appropriateness in the 
term, even if it had no such special historical origin. 
The exit from the curriculum of the College or School, is, 
in truth, only the entrance into a more extended course. 
When your studies are nominally ended, they have really 
only begun. The longer you live, the more will you un- 
derstand that the period of school-going is not the only, 
or even the main time of learning. The more thoroughly 
you have been taught here, the more certainly will you be 
a learner hereafter. I want no better test of the character 
of a school than the extent to which the idea prevails 
among its pupils and alumni, that it is a place for " finish- 
ing " one's studies. The idea is on a par with that of the 
young Miss who reported that she had read through Latin ! 

There is, it is true, in this School, a definite curriculum 
of studies, and that curriculum you have honorably com- 
pleted. You have just been received by public acknowl- 
edgment into the community of educated Avomen. But 
you will be false to the honorable sisterhood, false, I am 
sure, to all the teachings you have received here, if you 
19* 



222 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

entertain for a moment the thought that no further intel- 
lectual acquisitions are before you. The branches which 
you have learned thus far are chiefly valuable to you for 
the power they have given you to make still further im- 
provement. The studies pursued at school, and during the 
period of youth, are mainly intended for promoting intel- 
lectual growth, for giving us power, for perfecting our men- 
tal machinery. Our real acquisitions come afterward. , I 
speak, of course, of those who occupy the higher stations 
in society. To one who has to earn his bread by mere 
bodily toil, the few studies for which he has leisure in 
youth, must, of course, be such as are directly serviceable 
in his calling. But to those who claim to belong to the 
educated portion of the community, school studies are of 
right directed more to the development of the mental and 
moral powers, than to positive acquisition. Your instruc- 
tors return you to your friends and your home with a 
mind enlarged, with a taste refined, with a judgment cor- 
rected, ready to take your place and act well your part, 
as an educated woman. But remember, she is not an ed- 
ucated woman, who knows no more this year than she did 
last. True education is growth, and it never stands still. 
The tree which has ceased to grow, has begun to decay. 

This, then, is the one thought that I would have you 
take away with you from school. Give no place to the 
idea that henceforth books and study and elegant culture 
are to be laid aside. It would be a dishonor to your 
School, and a mistake of the first magnitude for yourself 

Perhaps you will appreciate this point more adequately, 
if you will turn your thoughts inward for a moment, and 



COUNSELS. 223 

ipeflect upon the change Avhich has been quietly going on 
in your own self and during your residence here. One 
whose occupation calls him almost daily to communicate 
his ideas to young persons, either by formal address, or by 
more familiar ways, feels to a greater degree, perhaps, than 
any other person can, the change to which I refer. I 
mean that increased quickness of intellectual apprehen- 
sion produced by a judicious and symmetrical course of 
study. Let me give you an instance. It fell to my lot, 
not long since, to address a School containing three hun- 
dred young ladies, all boarders, all over seventeen years 
of age. They were the best audience I ever had. Among 
them was not one, who did not appear to be intelligent 
and thoughtful, and with a mind more or less disciplined. 
But there were perceptible differences among them, and it 
is to this point that I would direct your attention. They 
were divided into four distinct classes, having attended the 
School severally one, two, three, and four years, and they 
were arranged before me in the order of their seniority as 
classes. The discourse was long and didactic, and portions 
of it were not easy to follow, containing a discussion of a 
rather abstruse point in mental philosophy. Now it 
seemed to me, on concluding the address, that I could 
have gone through that assembly, and marked with toler- 
able accuracy, class by class, just where each class ended 
and another class began, simply by what I had read in 
the faces of my young auditors. It was written as plainly 
upon those upturned faces, as was the discourse itself upon 
the manuscript before me. Those who had been four years 
in the School, undoubtedly learned manifold more from 



224 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

the exercise than the junior classes did. I could see it in 
the delivery of every paragraph. Such is the uniform re- 
sult of a proper course of study. It enables the student 
to grasp new truths with increased ease and readiness. 
We, who are teachers, feel this the moment we undertake 
to communicate our thoughts to an audience. The conse- 
quence is, we involuntarily measure what has been done 
educationally for a class of young persons, by the devel- 
opment which has been given to their powers, — by the 
manifest facility which they have gained for making 
further gains. That young woman is best educated who 
is best prepared to learn. 

Let me, then, renew the appeal to your own conscious- 
ness. Think for a moment upon the change which has 
been wrought in your own self during your career here. 
Compare your present self with that other self that you 
may remember some three or four years back. How much 
more you can accomplish now than you could then ! How 
much more clearly you can follow out a train of reasoning ! 
How much more easily you can compass an argument 1 
How much more you can enjoy what is beautiful ! How 
much more quickly and accurately you can remember! 
How much more you can command your attention! 
Whence this change, and what does it purport ? It means 
that you are educated. You have now a degree of mental 
power that you had not then. Your own consciousness 
tells you that you are now just in the condition to enter 
upon your harvest. The field is before you. You are 
girded for the work. And will you now indolently lay 
aside the sickle, and let the golden grain fall to the ground 



COUNSELS. 225 

ungathered ? Could there be a more egregious mistake ? 
Last week, I saw from my window two parent birds tempt- 
ing their young fledglings from the nest. Day by day, 
week by week, I had seen the child-birds growing and 
gaining strength. Their muscles were now well developed, 
their bodies were clothed with feathers, they had learned 
to use their wings, — they could fly. Would it not have 
been passing strange, had they continued as they were, 
contented to cower and to crawl, when they had acquired 
the power to soar? And will you be content to .remain 
forever only a fledgling, satisfied with having acquired the 
power of rising, but never actually using the wings which 
these years of honorable industry have given you ? 

Some of your sex are willing to admit the force of this 
argument when applied to men. A man, after graduating, 
is expected of course to continue his studies. His whole 
profession is one continued study. But somehow, it is 
thought, this truth does not hold good for women. Let 
me hope that you at least will not harbor such a notion. 
Whatever may be said of "women's rights," one right 
certainly, and one duty, is to keep yourself abreast of 
the other sex in continued mental growth and culture, and 
in general intelligence. If you w^ould awaken true respect 
in my sex, and I hold it a not unworthy ambition, you 
must in this matter do as w^e do, at least as those of us do 
who are worth your consideration at all. You must per- 
severingly, every year, add to your intellectual acquisi- 
tions. You must continue steadily to grow in knowledge 
and mental power. Do not cease your studies, because 
you have ceased going to school. Manage to have some 



226 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

elegant accomplishment or acquisition always in hand. A 
woman who is wise in this matter, never passes her prime. 
I speak not, of course, of the decrepitude of old age and 
of the decay of the faculties. But so long as the faculties 
remain unimpaired, a woman may become, and should 
aim to become, increasingly attractive, as she advances 
in years. Poets sing of sweet sixteen. Let me assure 
you, a woman may be charming at sixty. Mrs. Madison 
even at seventy was the most attractive woman ' in 
Washington. 

In society, how soon one feels the difference between a 
person who reads, and one who does not read. Two ladies 
may be of the same age. They may dress alike. They 
may have the same advantages of person. They may 
move in the same social circle. Yet you will not have 
been ten minutes in their society, though the conversation 
has been on only the most common topics of the day, before 
you will feel that the one woman, though at thirty or 
forty, is still only a superannuated school-girl, with even 
less resources than when she left the seminary, while the 
other is a delightful companion for persons of any age, 
with ready knowledge for- whatever turn the conversation 
may take, and so abounding in resources as not even to be 
open to the temptation of making a display of them. 
The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns 
on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In 
listening to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a 
sentence which is not based upon personalities. Her mind 
has not been fed and nurtured from day to day with beau- 
tiful and noble thoughts, with history and science and 



counsp:ls. 227 

general knowledge. She may be amiable. She may have 
personal beauty. But you find her empty and vapid, and 
you weary of her, in spite of the very best intentions of 
being interested. How different the woman who, in spite 
of social exactions, and even of accumulating domestic 
duties, and of the time-consuming tax of dress, still keeps 
her mind fresh and growing, by means of reading and 
culture, — who is ever adding to her stores of knowledge 
some new science, to her varied skill some new attainment, 
— who has ever in hand some new book. It is true, in- 
deed, that some ladies are blessed with more leisure for 
this purpose than others. But I fear it is not a ques- 
tion of more and less. It is too much a question of some 
and 7ione. I hold that every woman is entitled to have, 
and by proper determination she may have, some time for 
personal improvement. Remember, we have duties to 
ourselves, as well as to others, and we have no duty to 
ourselves more sacred than this, — to rescue from our time 
some portion for the purpose of making ourselves more 
worthy of regard. 

To undertake to suggest what particular studies you 
should pursue, in this larger school to which you are now 
admitted, would lead me into a train of remark entirely 
too extended. One single practical suggestion may per- 
haps be pardoned. Do not willingly relinquish the ac- 
quisitions already made. They are to you the true foun- 
dations for future improvement. You have fairly entered 
upon several important fields in the domain of science. 
You are familiar with the elements of Natural Philosophy, 
Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, Mental Philosophy, Rhe- 



228 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

toric, and witli the foundations of Mathematical Science. 
My advice is that in coming years you give to each of 
these branches, and of whatever else you have studied 
here, a stated systematic review. You have some skill in 
drawing and painting. Let not so graceful an accomplish- 
ment die out from your fingers. You excel in music. I 
need not say, if you would retain this excellence, you 
must give time to practice and study. So, whatever talent 
or attainment you now have, let it be your fixed purpose 
not to let it pass from your possession. Keep what you 
have, whatever else you may fail to do. To this end, as I 
said before, give to each of your school studies an occa- 
sional well-considered review. You will then always have 
in your mind certain fixed points, to which the miscella- 
neous knowledge picked up in your general reading will 
adhere, and around which it Avill accumulate in organized 
form. New studies, toOj will naturally afiiliate with the 
old, and will be easy and pleasant just in proportion as 
you keep the knowledge that you now have, fresh and 
bright. 

Besides this general advice, there is one accomplishment 
in particular, which I would earnestly recommend to you, 
as I am in the habit of doing to all of your sex. Culti- 
vate assiduously the ability to read well. I stop to par- 
ticularize this, because it is a thing so very much neglected, 
and because it is so very elegant, charming, and lady- 
like an accomplishment. Where one person is really in- 
terested by music, twenty are pleased Avith good reading. 
Where one person is capable of becoming a skilful musi- 
cian, twenty may become good readers. Where there is 



COUNSELS. 229 

one occasion suitable for the exercise of musical talent, 
there are twenty for that of reading. The culture of the 
voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful charm 
to the same voice in conversation. Good reading is the 
natural exponent and vehicle of all good things. It is 
the most effective of all commentaries upon the Avorks of 
genius. It seems to bring dead authors to life again, and 
makes us sit down familiarly Avith the great and good of 
all ages. 

Did you ever notice what life and power the Holy Scrip- 
tures have, when well read ? Have you ever heard of the 
wonderful eftects produced by Elizabeth Fry among the 
hardened criminals of New^gate, by simply reading to 
them the parable of the Prodigal Son ? Princes and peers 
of the realm, it is said, counted it a privilege to stand in 
those dismal corridors, among felons and murderers, merely 
to share with them the privilege of witnessing the marvel- 
lous pathos which genius, taste, and culture could infuse 
into that simple story. 

What a fascination there is in really good reading! 
What a power it gives one ! In the hospital, in the cham- 
ber of the invalid, in the nursery, in the domestic and the 
social circle, among chosen friends and companions, how 
it enables you to minister to the amusement, the comfort, 
the pleasure of dear ones, as no other art or accomplish- 
ment can. No instrument of man's devising can reach 
the heart, as does that most wonderful instrument, the 
human voice. It is God's special gift and endowment to 
his chosen creatures. Fold it not away in a napkin. If 
you would double the value of all your other iiccpiisitions ; 
20 



230 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

if you would add immeasurably to your own enjoyment, 
and to your power of promoting the enjoyment of others, 
cultivate with incessant care this Divine gift. No music 
below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech 
from the lips of a man or woman of high culture. 



4. To a Pupil on Entering a Normal School. 

You have entered upon a new and untried path. As 
one having been often over this way, and well acquainted 
with the features of the country before you, its lights and 
shadows, its roses and its thorns, its safe walks and its 
hidden pitfalls, I desire to talk with you a while before you 
enter upon the untried scene. 

1. First of all let me say to you, we give you a most 
hearty welcome. We are glad to see you here, and we 
tender to you in advance a warm and ready sympathy in 
the many little worries, annoyances, and discouragements 
that surely await you. For myself I may truly say, that, 
outside of my own home, I have no greater happiness than 
to be among my pupils, and few things could pain me 
more than to believe that any one who had been for any 
considerable time my pupil would not almost unconsciously 
claim me as a friend ; and it is an unceasing Avell-spring 
of joy for me to know that among your companions are 
many who, in time of trouble or difficulty or anxiety of 
any kind, would come to the Principal of the School, as 
sure of sympathy as if going to their own mother. 

This freedom of intercourse between teachers and their 



COUNSELS. 231 

pupils, this mutual exchange of confidence on one side and 
of sympathy on the other, is a source of good and a source 
of j)leasure, Avhich neither you nor we, my young friend, 
can afford to forego ; and if in the expression of this 
thought I have indulged in a rather unseemly use of the 
first person singular, it is not because I would claim for 
myself anything peculiar in this matter, but because, from 
my years and my position, I can perhaps, better than my 
associates, afford to speak out thus the inward promptings 
of the heart. We all give you the right hand of fellow- 
ship, and trust it will not be many weeks, or days even, 
before you shall feel that you have here a home as well as 
a school, friends as well as teachers. 

2. A very common feeling at the beginning of a course 
of study, is a feeling of discouragement. Nearly all the 
studies are new, and you enter upon each with fresh eager- 
ness. Now, it is in the nature of every study while it is 
new, to seem boundless. Under the guiding hand of a 
skilful teacher, its limits and capabilities are stretched 
out in one direction and another, interminable vistas 
spread out in the distance, and portentous difficulties rise 
up before the imagination, until the mind is bewildered. 

There is not one, of the formidable lists of studies be- 
fore you, that might not of itself, so great are its capabil- 
ities, occupy your whole time. When you find yourself 
called to grapple at once with four or five such studies, to 
measure yourself with competitors, many of whom have 
had opportunities of preparation greatly superior to your 
own, and in the presence of teachers to whom the whole 
subject is as familiar and as plain as the alphabet, and 



232 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

when, in addition, the methods of recitation are for the 
most part new and strange, you are very apt to become 
discouraged, to feel that you shall never learn to recite in 
the manner required, that you can never master the diffi- 
culties before you. This feeling arises most frequently in 
the best class of minds, those most conscientious in regard 
to duty and most capable of comprehending the full 
length and breadth and depth of a subject. The shallow 
and the trifling are never troubled with the kind of diffi- 
culties now under consideration. 

I address myself to you, my young friend, because I 
know you have come here with an earnest purpose, with 
a mind acute enough to see something of the vast work 
before you, and I say to you, as one who has had large 
experience in conducting other pilgrims over the same 
track, never lose heart. Difficulties which now seem in- 
surmountable, will gradually disaj^pear ; subjects which 
now seem impenetrable, will soon lighten up. Did you 
never enter a room in the dark ? At first the apartment 
is a universal blank. After a while, as your eyes become 
adjusted to the place, one article after another of the fur- 
niture becomes outlined to the vision, until at length, espe- 
cially if approaching day lends some additional rays of 
light, the whole scene stands out perfectly defined. So it 
is in entering upon a new study. Many a passage in it 
will seem to you at first a worse than Serbonian bog — a 
cave of impenetrable and undistinguishable darkness. 
But draw not back. Look steadily on. Light will come 
in time. Your power of seeing will, with every new trial, 
receive adjustment and growth, and you will in the end 



COUNSELS. 



233 



see with full and open vision where now you have only 
dim glimpses and guesses. Do not be discouraged, there- 
fore, if at first you fail, or seem to yourself to fail, in al- 
most every recitation you undertake. What seems impos- 
sible to-day, will be only next to impossible to-morrow, 
and only very difficult the day after. Your failures are 
often only the proofs that you have a glimpse at least 
of something below the surface of things. A discouraged 
pupil is never a source of anxiety to me. It is only the 
self-confident and over-wearing that are hopeless. 

3. I have spoken of recitations. Let me urge you to 
form some definite idea of what a recitation is, and what 
kind of a recitation you, as a pupil of a Normal School, 
should aim to make. And first of all, on this point, let 
me say, the mere answering of questions, and especially, 
the mere response of yes and no to questions, is not recit- 
ing—assuredly not such reciting as is to fit you for the 
office of a teacher. And, in the next place, let me say, 
that repeating verbatim the words of the book, is not the 
method of recitation at which you should aim. I do not 
agree with those who would dissuade you entirely from 
cultivating the faculty and enriching the stores of mem- 
ory. Not only memory, in its general exercise, but a 
purely verbal memory, is important. In your lessons, are 
many things, rules, definitions, and so forth, that should 
be learned with the most literal exactness, and should be 
so fixed in the memory that they will come at your bidding, 
in any place, at any moment. There are, too, in some of 
your books, passages from noble authors, which furnish 
food and nourishment to the soul, and which the mind 
20* 



234 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

craves in the very form and lineaments of their birth — 
passages which are like nuggets of virgin gold, or coins 
from the mint of some great sovereign in the realms of 
thought. They form a j)art of your wealth, and you want 
them, neither clipped, nor defaced, nor alloyed, but with 
every word and point exactly as it came from the hand 
of the master. These precious gems of thought, the gar- 
nered wealth of the ages, will not be neglected by any one 
who is wise. Treasure up in your intellectual storehouse 
as many of them as you can possibly compass, only with 
this proviso, be careful to select for this purpose the very 
best out of the great abundance that is before you, and 
make thorough work in what you do attempt to commit to 
memory. The act of memorizing will at once strengthen 
the faculty of memory itself, and will enrich you other- 
wise. By all means, therefore, learn by heart the leading 
definitions and rules of your text-books, and choice passages 
from all famous authors. But do not attempt in this way 
to commit to memory, or to recite verbatim, the pages of 
your history, geography, rhetoric, and so forth. Such a 
practice would be a most unwise waste of your time, and 
would cause a weakening, rather than a strengthening, of 
your faculties. 

Let me tell you exactly what I mean by reciting. Your 
teacher goes to the board and, chalk in hand, exj)lains to 
the class some point which they seem not to have appre- 
hended. That is my idea of reciting. First get thorough 
possession of the thoughts or facts of the lesson, and then, 
imagining the class and the teacher to be ignorant of the 
subject, explain it to them, just as you will expect to do 



COUNSELS. 235 

when the time comes that you will have a class of your 
own to instruct. It will aid you in preparing thus to re- 
cite a lesson, if in your rooms you will go over it aloud to 
each other, you and your room-mate, taking alternate 
portions. Such a method of preparation will doubtless 
require some time. But one lesson so prepared will be 
worth more to you than a whole week of study conducted 
in the ordinary manner. Kemember, that in a Normal 
School your object is, not merely to get knowledge, but to 
learn how to communicate what you have learned. First 
then go over a topic till you are sure you understand it. 
Then go over it again and again until you can recite 
readily and perfectly every part of it, in its order. Then 
practise yourself in telling it in your own words, aloud, if 
possible, to somebody else, until you can make the narra- 
tion or explanation continuously, from beginning to end, 
and without the possibility of being thrown out or con- 
fused by any amount of interruptions. Then at length 
are you prepared to recite. 

Is this standard of recitation too high ? Is it not what 
every one of your teachers does daily, and what you your- 
self will have to do the very first time you take your 
position as a teacher of others ? 

4. This leads me by a natural transition to the subject 
of study. You need to learn how to study, as much as 
you need to learn how to recite. Endeavor then to get 
some definite idea in your mind of what it is really to 
study. Mere reading is not study. Muttering the words 
over in a low, gurgling tone, or letting them glide in a 
soft, half-audible ripple upon your lips, is not study. 



236 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Going over the lesson in a listless, dreamy way, one eye 
on the book and one eye ready for whatever is going on in 
other j^arts of the room, is not study. Study is work. 
Study is agony. The whole soul must be roused, its every 
energy put forth, with a fixed, rapt attention, like that of 
a man struggling with a giant. Study, worthy of the name, 
forgets for the time every thing else, excludes every thing 
else, is incapable of being diverted by any thing else, the 
whole internal and external man being bent upon making 
just one thing its own. Such study of course soon ex- 
hausts the energies. It cannot be long protracted, nor 
need it be protracted. Take rest in the season of rest ; 
but, when you study, study with all your might. Throw 
your whole soul into it. One hour of such study accom- 
plishes more than whole days of listless poring over 
books. And, remember, you cannot study in this manner 
by merely willing to do it. It is an art, requiring training 
and practice, and thorough mental discipline. You might 
as well, on seeing the Writing-Master executing those 
marvels of penmanship, or the Drawing-Teacher with deft 
fingers limning with ease forms of grace and beauty, re- 
solve to go forthwith to the board and do the same thing, 
as expect, by a mere sic volo, to become a student. You 
are here to learn how to study, and the art will come to 
you only by slow progress, and after many trials. 

Give up the illusion that absolute seclusion and silence 
are necessary to study. I do not say that they are not at 
times desirable. But they do not of themselves generate 
earnest thought. The vacant mind, that has not yet 
learned to think, is when thus left to solitude and stillness, 



COUNSELS. 237 

quite as likely to go a wool-gathering, or to fall asleep, as 
to wrestle with some hard uninviting train of thought. 
The ajjpliances and the invitations to mental application, 
if we have really learned to study, must be mainly in our- 
selves, not in our surroundings. Besides, the greater part 
of the actual thinking and study, that has to be done by 
those in professional life, that will have to be done by 
you, when you enter upon the practice of your jDrofession 
as a teacher, must be done in circumstances not of your 
own choosing, just as time and opportunity may offer, by 
snatches, and at odd intervals, and often in the midst of 
distracting sights and sounds. I venture to say that three 
fourths of the graduates of this school, who are now teach- 
ing, have no opportunity for daily study and preparation 
for the duties of the school-room, except that afforded by 
a seat in the evening in the common sitting-room of the 
family, surrounded by children that are not always models 
of behavior, and within sight and hearing of all the petty 
details of household life. It is not therefore in itself un- 
desirable that a part at least of your study at school should 
be performed in a common room, where there are some 
temptations to be resisted, some distractions to be ignored. 
Acquiring the ability to study without distraction in the 
presence of others and in the midst even of confusion and 
noise, is as important to you as is the learning how to 
think aloud, in the presence of a class, which I have de- 
fined to be the true nature of a recitation. The ability to 
study and the ability to recite are intimately correlated, 
and the symptoms of both are unmistakable to the prac- 
tised eye and ear. I know just as well, by a glance of 



238 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

the eye on entering a study-room, what pupils are making 
intellectual growth, as I do on entering the class-room and 
listening to the recitations. One might as well feign to be 
in a fever, as to feign study. Nothing but the thing itself 
can assume its appearance. 

5. I approach my next subject of remark with some 
hesitation. Yet on no point, in the whole theory of men- 
tal action, have I a more fixed and assured conviction. 
Perhaps I may explain my meaning better, if I introduce 
it with one or two comparisons. 

Action of every kind, mental or material, is to be 
aided or accelerated, if at all, by forces of the same 
kind wdth the primary force. If a certain amount of 
weight avoirdupois will not make the scale kick the 
beam, we may produce the effect by laying on the 
requisite number of additional pounds, — by adding force 
of the same kind with the original. If the flame of one 
candle does not produce the illumination required for 
a particular effort, the addition of a second or a third will. 
If we wish to increase the speed of a locomotive, we do 
not whistle to it, or whip it, or say " get up ; " we add steam. 
If on the other hand we wish our horse to travel faster, 
we use a motive addressed to his nature. We appeal to 
his generosity, his pride, or his fear. So mental action is 
influenced and induced by forces of the same nature with 
itself One mind influences powerfully another mind, 
working upon us often, too, by mysterious influences that 
elude analysis. The influence of mind upon mind, other 
things being equal, is in proportion to the degree of per- 
fection in which these three conditions exist, to wit, the 



COUNSELS. 239 

fulness of accord and sympathy between the minds that 
are brought into contact, the closeness of the contact, and 
the greatness and power of the influencing and controlling 
mind. These three points hardly need explanation or ar- 
gument. Nothing is more obvious than that a mind fully 
in sympathy with another, does by that very circumstance 
exercise an increased mental power on that other. In like 
manner we all feel daily how our minds are lifted up, en- 
larged, enlightened, strengthened, by intercourse with one 
of powerful intellect. And how often have we felt, when 
ourselves wishing to influence any one, particularly when 
wishing to influence one much younger and weaker than 
ourselves, that we might accomplish our ends the better, 
if we could only know certainly and exactly what he was 
thinking, if we could as it were actually get into the 
chamber of his soul. This indeed we can never do. We 
think sometimes that we come very near to each other. 
But after all we never touch. Between my mind and yours, 
between yours and that of the most intimate friend you 
have in the world, there is a barrier, high as heaven, deep 
as hell, impenetrable as adamant. Thus far can w^e come 
and no farther. We can never enter into the soul of any 
human being. No human being can ever enter into ours. 
Yet, my dear pupil, did it never occur to you, that there 
is One Mind, and that a mind of infinitely great and tran- 
scendent power, to which there is no such barrier, and 
that this transcendent, all-knowing, all-powerful mind, is 
continually in direct contact with the very essence of your 
mind ? Can I influence your thinking faculties, and can- 
not the infinite God, who made those faculties ? Can He 



240 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

who gave our bodies all their power of growth and 
strength, not give growth and strength to our minds ? I 
do not profess to understand how the divine mind acts 
upon the human mind. I cannot always understand even 
how one human mind acts upon another. But of the fact 
I make no more question, than I do of the powers of 
flame, of steam, or of gravitation. And, as one set 
here to guide you in your mental progress, in all sober 
earnestness, I exhort you devoutly to invoke the aid of 
the Holy Ghost in the promotion of your studies — not 
merely to help you to use your acquisitions rightly, for his 
honor and the good of your kind, but to help you in mak- 
ing those acquisitions. If you would rise superior to dis- 
couragement, if you Avould acquire that mental discipline 
which is to enable you to study, and to recite and to teach 
in the very best and highest manner, pray. Call mightily 
upon God the Holy Ghost, who is after all the great edu- 
cator and teacher of the human race. Carry your feeble 
lamp to the great fountain of light and radiance. Put 
your heart into full accord and sympathy w^ith that of 
your dear elder Brother. Wrestle mightily with God in 
secret, as one that feels the burden of a great want. 
Thus, my dear pupil, will you best fit yourself for the 
duties of a student and of a teacher. For, believe me, 
there is sound philosophy as well as religion, in the utter- 
ance of the wise man, " The fear of the Lord is the begin- 
ning of knowledge." Surely that man is a fool, who in 
cultivating mind, whether his own or that of another, 
neglects to invoke the aid of the Infinite Mind. 



XXIX. 

AN ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

THE argument for popular education is familiar and 
trite, and yet it needs to be occasionally re-stated and 
enforced. There is no community in which there is not a 
considerable number of persons grossly and dangerously 
ignorant, and there are many communities in which the 
majority of the people are in this condition. There is no 
community in which the importance of general education 
is over-estimated ; there are unfortunately many commu- 
nities in which education is held to be the least important 
of public interests. A brief discussion of the subject, 
therefore, can never be entirely out of place. 

Before proceeding to the direct argument, let me notice 
some of the most common objections. 

It is a not uncommon opinion, that the business of edu- 
cation should be left, like other kinds of business, to the 
laws of trade. It is said, if a carpenter is wanted in any 
community, or a blacksmith, or a tailor, or a lawyer, or a 
doctor, carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, lawyers, and doctors 
will make their appearance. If a store is wanted, a store 
will spring up. Why not a school-house ? Those who use 
this argument forget the essential difference between the 
two classes of wants to be supplied. All men equally feel 
21 241 



242 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

the distress, if naked, or hungry, or sick, or suffering from 
any material want. The poor man, no less than the rich, 
feels the pinchings of hunger, and will exert himself to 
remedy the evil. The sick man, even more than the well, 
appreciates the value of medicine and the necessity of a 
physician. Not so in the matter of knowledge. A man 
must himself be educated, to understand the value of 
education. There are exceptions, of course. Yet it is 
substantially true, that the want of education is not one 
of those felt and pinching necessities that compel men's 
attention, and that consequently may be left to shift for 
themselves. A man who has himself enjoyed the blessing 
of a good education, expects to provide schools for his 
children, as much as he expects to provide for them food 
and clothing. The w^ants of their minds are to him press- 
ing realities, as much as are the wants of their bodies. 
Not so with the ignorant and debased neighbors, who live 
within stone's throw of his dwelling. They, from their 
own experience, know nothing better, and are quite con- 
tent, both for themselves and their children, to live on in 
the debased condition in which we see them. If these 
wretched creatures are ever moved to seek a higher style 
of living and being, the movement must originate outside 
of themselves. It is a case in which the man of higher 
advantages must think and act for those below him. It is 
a case in which people have a pressing need without 
knowing it, and in which consequently the laws of supply 
^nd demand do not meet the emergency. 

Another common opinion on this subject is that private 
enterprise is adequate to meet the want. Private enter- 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 243 

prise in education is not indeed to be discarded. Where 
the community as a whole, in its organized capacity, will 
do nothing, let individuals do what they can. In such 
cases, let those who appreciate the advantages of educa- 
tion, concert measures for the establishment of schools 
and the employment of teachers, and for inducing parents 
who are indifferent to send their children. By these pri- 
vate efforts, the community may be gradually awakened 
to the importance of the subject, and so be induced to 
take it up on their own account. But private benevolence 
is not sufficient for so great a work. Private benevolence 
besides is apt to be fitful. It is at best subject to interrup- 
tion by death and by reverses of fortune, while the cause 
is one which especially demands steadiness and continuity. 
The means for educating a community or a city should no 
more be subject to interruption, than the means of light- 
ing it, or of supplying it with water. 

The argument for depending upon private enterprise 
for devising and providing the means for popular educa- 
tion, w^ould apply equally well to matters of police, and to 
the protection of property. The strong-armed and the 
sagacious can take care of themselves. The stout-hearted 
and the good, by due concert and combination, could 
keep criminals in some check, even in a country where 
there were no courts of justice, or prisons, or detective 
police. But this is not the ordinary or the best mode of 
accomplishing the end, nor cc>uld it in any case be thor- 
oughly efficient. The restraint and punishment of crime 
belong to society as a whole, in its sovereign capacity. 
To the same society belongs the duty of seeing that its 



244 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

members do not fall into degrading ignorance and vice. 
God, in ordaining human society, had something higher 
in view than merely providing for the punishment of 
crime. Our Heavenly Father would have his children 
raised to the full enjoyment of their privileges as social 
and rational beings, and he seems to have established so- 
ciety for this very end, among others, that there may be 
an agency and a machinery adequate and fitted to drag 
even the unwilling out of the mire into which they have 
fallen. Without such an interposition on the part of so- 
ciety as a whole, the work will not be done. The mass of 
the people will remain in ignorance in every community, 
in which the community as such does not provide the 
means of education and general enlightenment. 

It is often urged against common schools, that they tend 
to impair parental obligation. Let us look this objection 
fairly in the face. The argument is stated as follows. If 
the community, in its organic capacity as a civil govern- 
ment, provides systematically for the instruction of the 
young, the system, just so far as it is successful and com- 
plete, does away with the necessity for any other provision. 
The parent, finding this work done to his hands, feels no 
necessity of looking after it himself, and so gradually 
loses all sense of obligation on the subject. Such a result, 
it is contended, is in contravention of the plainest dictates 
of nature and the most positive teachings of religion, both 
nature and religion requiring it as a primary duty of every 
parent to give his child a suitable education. 

In meeting this objection, the friends of common schools 
agree with the objector to the fullest extent in asserting 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 245 

the imperative, universal, irrepealable duty of the parent 
to educate his own child. The duty is not the less bind- 
ing on the parent, because a like duty, covering the same 
point, rests also on the community. The interests involved 
are so momentous, that God in his wise ordination has 
given them a double security. It is a case in which two 
distinct parties are both separately required to see one aud 
the same thing done. It is like taking two indorsers to a 
note. The obligation of one indorser is not impaired, be- 
cause another man equally with himself is bound for pay- 
ment. If a child grows up in ignorance and vice, while 
God wull undoubtedly hold the parent responsible, he will 
also not hold the community guiltless. Both parties will 
be guilty before him, both parties will be punished. A 
man is bound to maintain a certain amount of cleanliness 
about his habitation. If he fails to do so, and if in con- 
sequence of this failure the atmosphere around him be- 
comes, tainted and malarious, he and his will suffer. Dis- 
ease and death will visit his abode. But the consequences 
will not end here. The infection will extend. The whole 
community will be affected by it. The whole community, 
equally with the individual, are bound to see that the 
cause of the infection is removed. The infection will not 
spare the community because the individual has generated 
it, nor will it spare the individual because the community 
has failed to remov6 it. Each party has a duty and a 
peril of its own in regard to the same matter. 

The fact is, individuals and the community are so bound 
together, that on many points their obligations lie in coin- 
cident lines. The matter of education is one of these 
21* 



246 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

points. God has ordained the parental relation, and has 
implanted the parental affections, for this very reason, 
among others, that the faculties of the helpless young im- 
mortal may have due training and development, — that 
this development may not be left to chance, like that of a 
worthless weed, but may have the protection and guardian- 
ship which are the necessary birthright of every rational 
creature brought into being by the voluntary act of an- 
other. But God has ordained society also for this same 
end, among others, namely, that his rational creatures may 
have a competent agency, bound by the laws and necessi- 
ties of its own welfare to make adequate provision for the 
instruction and education of every human being. The 
one duty does not conflict with the other. The one obli- 
gation does not impair the other. Both lie in coincident 
lines. 

But, as a question of fact, is it true that common schools 
impair the sense of obligation in the minds of parents 
in regard to the duty of educating their children? I 
affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary. Those commu- 
nities in which there are no common schools, and in which 
the people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, 
are precisely those in which the sense of parental obliga- 
tion on this point is at the lowest ebb. Go to a region of 
country in which not one man in ten can read and write, 
and you will find that not one man in ten will care whether 
his children are taught to read and write. Those commu- 
nities on the contrary which have the best and most com- 
plete system of common schools, and in which this system 
has prevailed longest and has taken most complete hold 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 247 

of the public mind, are the very ones in which individuals 
will be found most keenly alive to the importance of the 
subject, and in which a parent will be regarded as a mon- 
ster, if his children are allowed to grow up uneducated. 

The objection, therefore, has no foundation either in fact 
or in reason. There is moreover another consideration 
not to be overlooked. In this matter of education, it is 
after all but a small part which the school does for a 
child. The main part of the child's education always 
takes place at home. The teacher is at best only an aid 
to the parent, supplementing the influences of the home 
and the street. The child is taking lessons continually 
from the father and mother, whether they mean it or 
not. Every teacher knows how much more rapidly a 
child improves at school, whose parents are well educated, 
and how difficult it is to teach a child who at home 
lives in an atmosphere of profound ignorance. The mind 
of the one whose home is a region of darkness and intel- 
lectual torpor, will be dwarfed and distorted, no matter 
what the efforts of its teachers. The mind of the one, on the 
contrary, whose home is the abode of intellectual light, 
warmth, and sunshine, will have a corresponding growth 
and expansion at school. There is a continual uncon- 
scious tuition, good or bad, received from the very atmo- 
sphere of the family. Besides this, there is a great deal 
of direct, active duty to be performed by the parent in the 
education of the child. No matter how good the school, 
or how faithful the teacher, there always remains much to 
be done by the parent, even in regard to the school duties. 
The parent must see that lessons are prepared, that the 



248 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

child is properly provided with books, that the meal times 
and the other arrangements of the household are such as 
to help forward the child's studies. There are a hundred 
things which the father and mother can do to help or to 
hinder the work of the school. A child, whose parents 
give proper home supervision over his studies, w^ill, other 
things being equal, make twice the progress of one whose 
parents give the matter no attention. The community, 
therefore, in establishing common schools, does by no 
means take the whole matter of education out of the 
hands of the parent. On the contrary, it still leaves with 
him the most important and necessary of the duties con- 
nected with the education of his children, while it gives 
him aids for the performance of the remaining duties, 
which no private means can ordinarily supply. 

I come, however, to a much graver objection. It is 
urged against common schools, as organized in this country, 
that religious instruction is excluded from them, and that 
without this element they only tend to make educated 
villains. Education, it is said, without the restraining 
and sanctifying influences of religion, only puts into the 
hands of the multitude greater power for evil. If this 
objection is valid, the most enlightened and Christian 
communities of the world have made, and are making, an 
enormous mistake. Yet the objection is urged with seri- 
ousness by men whose purity of motive is above question, 
and whose personal character gives great weight to their 
opinions. The objection originated in England, where all 
attempts to make legislative provision for the education 
of the common people have been steadily resisted by a 



AEGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 249 

potential party in the established church. The arguments 
put forth in the English religious journals have been re- 
produced in the journals here, and have in many instances 
awakened the apprehensions of serious-minded persons. 
It is worth while, therefore, to give the subject some dis- 
tinct consideration. 

In the first place, the facts are not exactly as stated by 
those making the objection. Though little direct religious 
instruction may be given in the common school, there is 
usually a large amount of religious influence. A great 
majority of the teachers of our common schools are pro- 
fessing Christians. Very many of them are among our 
most active Sabbath-school teachers. Now a truly godly 
man or woman, at the head of a school, though never 
speaking a word directly on the subject of religion, yet 
by the power of a silent, consistent example, exerts a con- 
tinual Christian influence. In the second place, as a matter 
of fact, direct religious teaching is not entirely excluded 
from our public schools. I think, it by no means holds 
that prominent position in the course of study which it 
should hold. But it is not entirely excluded. The Bible, 
with very rare exceptions, is read daily in all our common 
schools. It is appealed to as ultimate authority in ques- 
tions of history and morals. It is quoted for illustration 
in questions of taste. It is in many schools a text-book 
for direct study. In the third place, nine out of ten of 
the children of the week-day school attend the Sabbath- 
school. The Sabbath-school supplements the instructions 
of the week-day school. The case, therefore, is not that 
of an education purely intellectual. Moral and religious 



250 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

instruction accompanies the instruction in worldly knowl- 
edge. The Sabbath-school, the church, and the family, by 
their combined and ceaseless activities, infuse into our 
course of elementary education a much larger religious 
ingredient than a stranger might suppose, who should con- 
fine his examination to a mere inspection of our common 
schools, or to the reading of the annual reports of our 
educational boards. 

But apart from all these considerations, taking the ques- 
tion in its naked form, is it true that mere intellectual 
education has the tendency alleged? I do not believe 
it. The constitution of the human mind gives no warrant 
for such an inference. Recorded, indisputable facts, over- 
whelmingly disprove it. So far is it from being true that 
the mere diffusion of knowledge has a tendency to make 
men knaves and infidels, I believe the very opposite to 
be true. Knowledge is the natural ally of religion. To 
hold otherwise, is to disparage and dishonor religion — to 
imply, if not to say, that ignorance is the mother of 
devotion. 

There is an inborn antagonism between the intellectual 
and the sensual nature of man. If you give to the intel- 
lect no development, you leave the senses as the ruling 
power. We see this strikingly illustrated in the idiotic, 
who are for the most part disgustingly sensual. Among 
a population grossly ignorant and uneducated, sensualism 
prevails in its most appalling forms. The man is a sensu- 
alist, simply because he knows no higher pleasures. He 
is degraded, because he has no motives to be otherwise. 
He is barely above a brute. The amount of crime, of 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 251 

the coarsest and most debasing character, among the un- 
educated peasantry of England, is almost incredible. Here 
is a description of an English peasant of the present day, 
given by a competent unimpeached witness, himself an 
Englishman. I quote from a work on " The Social 
Condition and Education of the People of England," by 
Joseph Kay, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge, who 
was commissioned by the Senate of the University to 
travel for the purpose of examining into the social condi- 
tion of the poorer classes. Says Mr. Kay : " You cannot 
address an English peasant, without being struck with the 
intellectual darkness which surrounds him. There is 
neither speculation in his eye nor intelligence in his coun- 
tenance. His whole expression is more that of an animal 
than of a man. He is wanting too in the erect and inde- 
pendent bearing of a man. As a class, our peasants have 
no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine 
cases out of ten, recreation is associated in their minds 
wdth nothing higher than sensuality. About one half of 
our poor can neither read nor write, have never been in 
any school, and know little, or positively nothing, of the 
doctrines of the Christian religion, of moral duties, or of 
any higher pleasures than beer-drinking and spirit-drink- 
ing, and the grossest sensual indulgence. They live pre- 
cisely like brutes, to gratify, so far as their means allow, 
the appetites of their uncultivated bodies, and then die, 
to go they have never thought, cared, or w^ondered whither. 
Brought up in the darkness of barbarism, they have no 
idea that it is possible for them to attain any higher con- 
dition ; they are not even sentient enough to desire, with 



252 IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM. 

any strength of feeling, to change their situation ; they 
are not intelligent enough to be perseveringly discontented ; 
they are not sensible to what we call the voice of con- 
science ; they do not understand the necessity of avoiding 
crime, beyond the mere fear of the police and the jail ; 
they have unclear, indefinite, and undefinable ideas of all 
around them ; they eat, drink, breed, work, and die ; and 
while they pass through their brute-like existence here, 
the richer and more intelligent classes are obliged to guard 
them with police and standing armies, and to cover the 
land with prisons, cages, and all kinds of receptacles for 
the perpetrators of crime." 

Surely it must be some hallucination of mind, which 
leads men to suppose that the diffusion of knowledge 
among such a population, even though it be only scientific 
and intellectual knowledge, can have any natural or gen- 
eral tendency adverse to religion and morals. Apart, 
however, from sj^eculation, and as a pure question of fact, 
the recorded statistics of crime j)oint unmistakably the 
other way. Criminal records the world over prove, be- 
yond reasonable doubt, that the overwhelming majority 
of crimes are committed by persons deplorably ignorant. 
Intellectual education, therefore, I contend, even when 
deprived of its natural ally and adjunct, religious training, 
has no natural tendency to produce knaves and villains. 
On the contrary, it is a most efficient corrective and re- 
straint of the evil and debasing tendencies of human nature. 
If the intellect is not so high a region in man's constitu- 
tion as the moral powers, which I readily grant, it is at 
least above the mere sensual part, in which vice and crime 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 253 

have their chief spring and aliment. The question fortu- 
nately is one susceptible of a direct appeal to facts. Who 
are the men and women that people our jails and prisons? 
Are they persons of education, or are they in the main 
persons deplorably ignorant? What is the record of 
criminal statistics on this point? 

I will quote a few of these statistics, from a great 
mass of similar evidence lying before me. 

Out of 252,544 persons committed for crime in England 
and Wales, during a series of years, 229,300, or more than 
90 per cent., are reported as uneducated, either entirely 
unable to read and write, or able to do so only very im- 
perfectly ; 22,159 could read and write, but not fluently ; 
and only 1085 {less than one half per cent, of the whole) 
were what we call educated persons. 

In nine consecutive years, beginning with the year 1837, 
only 28 educated females were brought to the bar of crim- 
inal justice in England and Wales, out of 7,673,633 fe- 
males then living in that part of the United Kingdom ; 
and in the year 1841, out of the same population, not one 
educated female was committed for trial. 

In a special commission, held in 1842, to try those who 
had been guilty of rioting and disturbance in the manu- 
facturing districts, out of 567 thus tried, 154 could neither 
read nor write, 155 could read only, 184 could read and 
write imperfectly, 73 could read and write well, and only 
one had received superior instruction. 

In 1840, in 20 counties of England and Wales, with a 
population of 8,724,338, there were convicted of crime 
only 59 educated persons, or one for every 147,870 in- 
22 



254 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

habitants. In 32 other counties, with a population of 
7,182,491, the records furnished not one convict who had 
received more than the merest elements of instruction. 

In 1841, in 15 English counties, with a population of 
9,569,064, there were convicted only 74 instructed persons, 
or one to every 129,311 inhabitants, while the 25 remain- 
ing counties and the whole of Wales, with a population of 
6,342,661, did not furnish one single convictioli of a per- 
son who had received more than the mere elements of 
education. 

In 1845, out of a total of 59,123 persons taken into 
custody, 15,263 could neither read nor write, and 39,659 
could barely read, and could write very imperfectly. 

In the four best taught counties of England, the number 
of schools being one for every seven hundred inhabitants, 
the number of criminal convictions was one a year for 
every 1108 inhabitants. In the four worst taught counties, 
the number of schools being one for every 1501 inhab- 
itants, the number of convictions was one a year for every 
550 inhabitants. That is, in one set of counties, the 
people were about twice as well educated as in the other, 
and one half as much addicted to crime. In other words, 
in proportion as the people were educated, were they free 
from crime. 

Thrift and good morals usually keep pace with the 
spread of intelligence among the people. This has been 
the result in all those countries of Europe where good 
common schools are maintained, as in Iceland, Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and most of the 
German States. Pauperism, with its attendant evils and 



ARGUMENT FOB COMMON SCHOOLS. 255 

crimes, is almost unknown in those countries, while in 
England, where the common people are worse educated 
than those of any Protestant nation in the world, pauper- 
ism has become an evil which her wisest statesmen have 
given up as unmanageable. In 1848, in addition to hun- 
dreds of persons assisted by charitable individuals, no less 
than 1,876,541 paupers {one out of every eight of the popu- 
lation !) were relieved by the boards of guardians of the 
poor, at an expense from the public purse of nearly thirty 
millions of dollars. 

In our own country, the same pains have not been taken 
to collect statistics on this subject, because comparatively 
little controversy about it has existed here to call forth 
inquiry. We as a people have generally taken it for 
granted that popular education lessens crime and pauper- 
ism. Still, facts enough have been recorded to show the 
same results here as elsewhere. When an educated villain 
is convicted, like Monroe Edwards or Professor Webster, 
the fact becomes so notorious by means of the press, that 
it is unconsciously multiplied in our imagination, and we 
think the- instances more numerous than they really are. 
We never think of the scores of obscure villains that are 
convicted every week all the year round. A quotation or 
two from the facts which have been recorded, w^ill be suffi- 
cient to satisfy us on this point. 

In the Ohio penitentiary, out of 276 inmates, nearly all 
were reported as ignorant, and 175 as grossly so. 

In the Auburn prison, New York, out of 244 inmates, 
only 39 could read and write. 

In the Sing Sing prison, no official record has been made 



256 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

on this point. But the Kev. Mr. Luckey, for more than 
twenty years chaplain of the prison, is obliged by the 
prison regulations to superintend and read all the letters 
between the prisoners and their friends. In this manner 
he becomes personally acquainted with the condition 
of the convicts in regard to education. He reported a few 
months since to the writer of these pages, that while there 
are ahvays some among the convicts who have been edu- 
cated, yet the great mass of them are stolidly ignorant. 
There are usually between one and two hundred learning 
to read, and this does not include the half of those who 
are unable to read, as the attendance upon the class is 
voluntary, the accommodations are meagre, and most of 
the prisoners are indifferent to their own improvement. 
Not five in a hundred can write otherwise than in the 
most clumsy and awkward manner, and with the grossest 
blunders in orthography, and not more than two in a hun- 
dred can write a sentence grammatically. Out of the 700 
then in prison, only three were liberally educated, and two 
of these were foreigners. 

Throughout the State of New York, in 1841, the ratio 
of uneducated criminals to the whole number of unedu- 
cated persons was twenty-eight times as great as the ratio 
of educated inhabitants. 

In view of the facts which have been given, and which 
might be multiplied to almost any extent, it is not easy to 
avoid the conclusion that mere intellectual education has 
some power to restrain men from the commission of crime. 
Assuredly, ignorance and sin are natural adjuncts and allies. 

Schools undoubtedly cost something. The community 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 257 

that undertakes to educate the masses, or the individual 
that undertakes to educate his children, must expect to 
have a serious bill to pay. It is a pernicious folly to 
inculcate the contrary. The advocate of popular edu- 
cation, who tries to persuade people into the experiment, 
under the assurance that the expense will be trifling, mis- 
leads his readers, and puts back the cause which he would 
fain put forward. But there is a most significant _/)er 
contra in the account, and on this there is no danger of 
dwelling too much. Nothing is so costly as crime, and no 
preventive of crime is more efficient than education. 
Schoolhouses are cheaper than jails, teachers and books 
are a better security than handcuffs and policemen. There 
are educated villains, it is true. But they are rare, and 
they attract the greater attention by the very fact of their 
rarity. But go into a prison, or a criminal court, or a 
police court, and see who they are that mainly occupy the 
proceedings of our expensive machinery of criminal jus- 
tice. Nine-tenths of those miserable creatures are in a 
state of most deplorable- ignorance. Degraded, sensual, 
with no knowledge of anything better than the indul- 
gence of the lowest passions, without mental resources, or 
any avenue to intellectual enjoyment, they often resort to 
crime from sheer Avant of something better to do. When 
Dr. Johnson was asked, "Who is the most miserable 
man ? " his reply was, " The man who cannot read on a 
rainy day." There is profound meaning in the answer. 
The man who has been educated, who not only can read, 
but has acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a 
proper kind, is rarely driven into low and debasing crime. 
22* 



258 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

He has resources within himself, which are a counterpoise 
to the incitements of his animal nature. His awakened 
intellect and conscience also make him understand more 
clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of 
the deeds which swell the records of our criminal courts 
spring from poverty, as every criminal lawyer well knows, 
and there is no remedy against extreme poverty so sure as 
education. The old adage says that knowledge is power. 
It is also wealth. A man with even an ordinary, common 
school education, can turn himself in a hundred ways, 
where a mere ignorant boor would be utterly helpless. 
The faculties are developed, ingenuity is quickened, the 
man's resources are enlarged. An educated man may be 
tempted to crime, but he is not driven into it, as hundreds 
are daily, by mere poverty, or by an intolerable hunger 
of the mind for enjoyment of some kind. 

Schools, then, especially schools in which moral and 
religious truth is inculcated, are the most powerful means 
of lessening crime, and of lessening the costly and fright- 
ful apparatus of criminal administration. As schoolhouses 
and churches increase in the land, jails and prisons di- 
minish. As knowledge is diffused, property becomes se- 
cure, and rises in value. A community, therefore, is 
bound to see that its members are properly educated, if 
for no other reason, in mere self-defence. The many must 
be educated, in order that the many may be protected. A 
great city is just as sacredly bound to provide for its teem- 
ing population the light of knoAvledge, as it is to provide 
material light for its streets. The one kind of illumination, 
equally with the other, is an essential part of its police. 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 259 

No matter what the cost, the dark holes and alleys must 
be flooded with the light of truth, before which the owls 
and bats and vampyres of society will be scattered to the 
winds. A great city without schools would be a hell, — a 
seething caldron of vice, impurity, and crime. No man 
of sound mind would choose such a place for the resi- 
dence of himself and family, who had the means of living 
in any other place. If we could suppose two cities entirely 
equal in other respects, but in one of them a superior 
and costly system of free schools, while the other spent 
not a dollar upon schools, but depended solely upon the 
rigors of the law and the strong arm of avenging justice 
for restraining the ignorant and corrupt masses, can there 
be any doubt which city would be the safest and most 
desirable place of residence ? 

Whatever view of this subject may be taken in other 
countries, we in this country are shut up to the necessity 
of popular education. We at least have no choice. Uni- 
versal suffrage necessitates universal education. If we do 
not educate our people, educate universally, educate 
wisely and liberally, we can hardly expect to maintain 
permanently our popular institutions. The man's vote, 
who cannot read the names on the ballot which he throws 
into the box, counts just as much in deciding public affairs 
as yours, who are versed in statesmanship and political 
economy. He is a partner in the political firm. You 
can neither withdraw from the firm yourself, nor can you 
throw him out. In the absence of general education, this 
tremendous power of suffrage is something frightful to 
contemplate. " The greatest despotism on earth," says De 



260 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Tocqueville, " is an excited, untaught public sentiment ; 
and we should hate not only despots, but despotism. When 
I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care not 
to know who oppresses me; the yoke is not the easier, 
because it is held out to me by a million of men." 

The danger from this source is intensified by the im- 
mense immigration from abroad which is going on, and 
which bids fair very greatly to increase. The great ma- 
jority of those who seek our shores, come here ignorant. 
AVith little knowledge of any kind, and with no knowl- 
edge whatever of the nature of republican institutions, 
these men, almost at once, are made sharers of the popular 
sovereignty, with all its tremendous powers of peace and 
war, order and anarchy, life and death. Not to have a 
system of public education, by which these ignorant and 
dangerous masses shall be enlightened, and shall be assimi- 
lated to the rest, and to the better part, of the population, 
is simply suicidal. Our national life hangs u23on our 
common schools. 

Besides this grave political consideration, affecting the 
interests of the entire body politic, and the question of 
the success and stability of our national institutions, there 
is another consideration coming home closely and individ- 
ually to each man's personal interests. Where the law of 
trial by jury prevails, every citizen, whether educated or 
ignorant, takes part in the administration of justice. 
Twelve men, taken indiscriminately from the mass of the 
people, or if with any discrimination, taken more fre- 
quently from the lower walks of life than from the higher, 
are placed in a jury box to decide upon almost every 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 261 

possible question of human interests. The jury decides 
your fortune, your reputation. The jury says whether you 
live or die. Go into a court of justice. Are they light 
matters which those twelve men are to determine ? Look 
at the anxious faces of those whose estates, whose good 
name, whose worldly all hangs upon the intelligence of 
those twelve men, or of any one of them. What assurance 
have you, save that which comes from popular education, 
that these men will understand and do their duty? Who 
would like to trust his legal rights or his personal safety 
to the verdict of a jury of Neapolitan lazzaroni ? 

In a few short years, the idle boys who are now prowling 
about the streets and alleys of our towns, the wdiarf-rats 
of our cities, w^ll be a part of our jurymen. Is it of no 
consequence to me, whether their minds shall be early 
trained and disciplined, so that they will be capable of 
following a train of argument, or of comprehending a 
statement of facts ? How is it possible to administer jus- 
tice with any degree of fairness and efficiency, where the 
majority of those who are to constitute the jurymen and 
the witnesses are stolidly ignorant? By common law, 
every man has a right to be tried by his peers. Let law 
then provide that those shall, in some substantial sense, 
be my peers, on whose voice my all in life may depend. 

But let us recur once more to the economical part of 
the argument. When a community is taxed for the sup- 
port of common schools, the question naturally rises 
among the taxpayers. Is the system worth the cost ? Does 
the community, by the diffusion of knowledge and educa- 
tion, gain enough to counterbalance the large expense 



262 • IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

which such education involves? Even if this question 
could not be answered in the affirmative, it would not 
follow that common schools should be dispensed with. 
Common schools are needed as the best and cheapest pro- 
tection against the crimes incident to an ignorant and 
degraded population. Common schools are right and 
proper, because without them the majority of those created 
in the image of God will never attain to that noble man- 
hood which is their rightful inheritance. But the argu- 
ment will receive additional force, if it can be shown that 
general education increases the wealth of the community. 

That education does have this effect is evident, I think, 
from two independent lines of argument. First, an intel- 
ligent, educated man is capable individually of achieving 
greater material results than one who is ignorant. Sec- 
ondly, the general diffusion of intelligence through a com- 
munity leads to labor-saving inventions, and thus increases 
its producing poAver. 

In regard to the first line of argument, some curious 
and instructive facts were collected a few years since by 
the late Horace Mann. His inquiries were directed to 
the efficiency of operatives in factories, a class of men who 
would seem to require as little general intelligence as any 
kind of laborers. It was found that, as a general rule, 
those operatives who could sign their names to their 
weekly receipts for money, were able to do one-third more 
work, and to do it better, than those who made their 
mark. Nor is this at all to be wondered at. There is no 
kind of work, done by the aid of human muscle, that is 
purely mechanical. Mind is partner in all that the body 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 263 

does. Mind directs and controls muscle, and even in 
emergency gives it additional energy and power. No 
matter how simple the process in which an operative may 
be engaged, some cultivation of his mental powers is 
needed. Without it he misdirects his own movements, 
and mistakes continually the orders of his superintending 
workman. A boy who has been to a good common school, 
and has had his mental activities quickened, and whose 
mind has been stimulated and roused by worthy motives, 
not only will be more industrious for it when he becomes 
a man, but his industry will be more effective. He will 
accomplish more, even as a day laborer, than the mere 
ignorant boor. When we come to any kind of skilled 
labor, the difference between the educated and the igno- 
rant is still more apparent. An intelligent mechanic is 
worth twice as much as one ignorant and stupid. 

Many years ago a very instructive fact on this point 
came under my own personal observation. A gentleman 
of my acquaintance had frequent need of the aid of a 
carpenter. The work to be done was not regular carpentry, 
but various odd jobs, alterations and adaptations to suit 
special wants, and no little time and materials were wasted 
in the perpetual misconceptions and mistakes of the suc- 
cessive workmen employed. At length a workman was 
sent who was a German, from the king'dom of Prussia. 
After listening attentively to the orders given, and doing 
what he could to understand what his employer wanted, 
Michael would whip out his pencil, and in two or three 
minutes, with a few rapid lines, would present a sketch of 
the article, so clear that any one could recognize it at a 



264 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

glance. It could be seen at once, also, whether the inten- 
tion of his employer had been rightly conceived, and 
whether it was practicable. The consequence was, that so 
long as Michael was employed, there was no more waste 
of materials and time, to say nothing of the vexation of 
continued failures. Michael was not really more skilful 
as a carpenter than the many others who had preceded 
him. But his knowledge of drawing, gained in a common 
school in his native country, made his services worth from 
fifty cents to a dollar a day more than those of any other 
workman in the shop, and he actually received two dollars 
a day, when others in the same shop were receiving only a 
dollar and a quarter. He was always in demand, and he 
always received extra wages, and his work even at that 
rate was considered cheap. 

What was true of Michael in carpentry, would be true 
of any other department of mechanical industry. In 
cabinet-making, in shoe-making, in tailoring, in masonry, 
in upholstery, in the various contrivances of tin and sheet 
iron with which our houses are made comfortable, in gas- 
fitting and plumbing, in the thousand-and-one necessities 
of the farm, the garden, and the kitchen, a workman who 
is ready and expert with his pencil, who has learned to 
put his own ideas, or those of another, rapidly on paper, 
is worth fifty per cent, more than his fellows who have not 
this skill. 

The example of this man was brought vividly to my 
mind at a later day, in Philadelphia, when an impor- 
tant educational question was under discussion. Rem- 
brandt Peale had two dreams, each worthy of his genius. 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 



265 



One was to paint a Washington which should go down to 
posterity ; the other was so to simplify the elements of 
the art of drawing that young boys and girls might learn 
it as universally as they learn to read and write. He 
spent long years in maturing a little work for this purpose, 
no bigger than a primer or a spelling-book, and a 
determined effort was made on the part of some of the 
friends of popular education to introduce the study into 
the primary public schools of Philadelphia. It was in- 
troduced into the High Schools. But its benefits were 
limited to a comparatively small number. The hope 
and the aim of the friends of Mr. Peale's project were to 
make the study an elementary one — to make a certain 
amount of proficiency in drawing a test of promotion 
from the lower schools to the schools above it. This 
would have placed "Graphics" alongside of the copy- 
book and the spelling-book. After struggling for several 
years with popular prejudice, the friends of the scheme 
were obliged to abandon it as hopeless. The idea was too 
much in advance of the times. Could the plan have 
succeeded, and could the entire youthful population of 
that great city, which is preeminently a mechanical and 
manufacturing centre, have grown up with a familiar 
practised skill in the use of the pencil, in ordinary, off- 
hand drawing, such as our friend Michael had, there can 
be no question that it would have added untold millions 
to the general wealth. If every boy and girl in that great 
metropolitan city were now obliged to spend as much 
time in learning to draw as is spent in learning to spell, 
and at the same age that they learn to spell, I do 
23 



266 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

soberly belieye that the addition to the wealth of the city, 
by the increased mechanical skill that would be devel- 
oped, would be worth more than the entire cost of her 
public schools, although they do cost well-nigh a million 
of dollars annually. 

What is true of drawing, is true of every branch and 
accomplishment necessary to a complete education. A 
man is educated when all his capacities bodily and mental 
are developed, and a community is educated when all its 
members are. Now if we could imagine two communities, 
of exactly equal numbers, and in physical circumstances 
exactly equal as to climate, soil, access to markets, and so 
forth, and if one of these communities should tax itself to 
the extent of even one-fourth of its income in promoting 
popular education, while the other spent not a dollar in 
this way, there can be little doubt as to which community 
would make the most rapid advances in wealth and in 
every other desirable social good. 

We happen to have on this subject one most striking 
and significant record. In 1670, the English Commis- 
sioners for Foreign Plantations addressed to the Governors 
of the several colonies a series of questions concerning the 
condition of the settlements under their charge. One of 
these questions related to the means of popular education. 
The answers of two of the Governors are preserved. One 
of them, the Governor of Connecticut, ruled a territory 
to which nature had not been specially propitious. Its 
climate was bleak, its coast rockbound, its soil blest with 
only ordinary fertility. The other territory, Virginia, 
had an extraordinary amount of natural advantages, It 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 267 

had fine harbors, numerous navigable streams, a climate 
more temperate by several degrees than its rival, the soil 
in its lowlands and valleys unsurpassed in any of the 
Plantations for its capacity to produce wheat, corn, and 
tobacco, its mountains filled with untold treasures of lime, 
iron, and coal, (and, it now seems, with petroleum also,) 
and withal that wonderful variety of natural resources, 
which seems best suited to stimulate and reward the pro- 
ductive industry of its inhabitants. 

The Governor of the less favored colony replied to the 
Koyal Commissioners, as follows : " Oiie-fourth of the 
annual revenue of the Colony is laid out in maintaining 
free schools for the education of our children." The 
policy thus early impressed upon the colony has been 
maintained with steadfast and almost proverbial consist- 
ency to this day, that region being known the world over 
as the land of schoolmasters. The Governor of the other 
colony replied, " I thank God, there are no free schools, 
nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred 
years." To this policy she also has until lately only too 
faithfully adhered. Now what is the result ? 

By referring to the tables accompanying the Census of 
1860, we find the following significant facts. 

1. The average cash value of land was not quite $12 
an acre in one commonwealth (Virginia), and a little over 
$36 an acre in the other. 

2. One commonwealth sustained only five inhabitants 
to every hundred acres of her soil, the other sustained 
eighteen inhabitants to every hundred acres. 

3. The value of all property, real and personal, aver« 



268 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

aged by the population, was in one commonwealth $496 
to every inhabitant, in the other $965 to every inhabitant. 

4. The value of all property, real and personal, aver- 
aged by the acre, was in one commonwealth less than $26 
to the acre, in the other more than $177 to the acre. 

To which facts I may add, what is true, though not in 
the Census, it was the invention of Eli Whitney, a travel- 
ling schoolmaster from Connecticut, that has trebled the 
value of land in nearly every Southern State. 

I have been endeavoring to show that popular educa- 
tion, though it is expensive, tends to national wealth. 
The argument is that an educated population is capable 
of producing greater material results than a population 
uneducated can produce. The example of Eli Whitney, 
just referred to, suggests the other line of argument, 
which I shall now notice briefly in conclusion. This 
second argument is, that the general diffusion of intelli- 
gence in a community tends to quicken invention, and 
leads to the discovery of those scientific principles and of 
those ingenious labor-saving machines, by which the pro- 
ductive power of the community is so greatly multiplied. 
The cotton-gin, the steam-engine, the sewing-machine, and 
the reaping-machine would never have been invented in a 
nation of boors. It is not asserted that every boy who 
goes to school will become an inventor. But it is as cer- 
tain as the laws of mind and matter can make it, that 
inventions abound in a nation in proportion to its progress 
in science and the general spread of intelligence among 
the masses. Multiply common schools and you multiply 
inventions. How much these latter increase man's pro- 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 269 

ducing power, and so add to the aggregate of human 
wealth, it is needless to say. The invention of Watt 
alone has quadru23led the productive power of the whole 
human race. The aggregate steam-power of one single 
country. Great Britain, equals the muscular caj^acity for 
labor of four hundred millions of men — more than twice 
the number of adult males capable of labor on our planet. 
Its aggregate power throughout the earth is equal to the 
male capacity for manual work of four or five worlds like 
ours. The commerce, the navigation, the maritime war- 
fare, the agriculture, the mechanic arts of the human race, 
have been revolutionized by this single invention not yet 
a century old. 

The application of scientific truths to the common in- 
dustries of life is becoming every day more and more a 
necessity. The village carpenter, no less than the builder 
of the Niagara Suspension Bridge, makes hourly reference 
to scientific laws. The carpenter who misapplies his 
formulae for the strength of materials, builds a house 
which falls down. The properties of the various mechan- 
ical powers are involved in every machine. Every ma- 
chine, indeed, it has been well said, is a solidified mechan- 
ical theorem. The surveyor in determining the limits of 
one's farm, the architect in planning a house, the builder 
in planning his estimates, and the several master workmen 
who do the carpentry, masonry, and finishing, are all 
dependent upon geometric truths. Bleaching, dyeing, 
calico-printing, gas-making, soap-making, sugar-refining, 
the reduction of metals from their ores, with innumerable 

other productive industries, are dependent upon chemistry. 

23* 



270 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

Agriculture, the basis of all the other arts, is in the same 
condition. Chemical knowledge, indeed, is doing for the 
productive powers of the soil what the application of steam 
has done for the increase of mechanical power. The 
farmer who wishes to double his crops, finds the means of 
doing so, not in multiplying his acres, but in applying 
a knowledge of the laws of chemistry to the cultivation 
of the soil already possessed. Even physiology is adding 
to the wealth of the farming interest. The truth that the 
production of animal heat implies waste of substance, and 
that therefore preventing the loss of heat prevents the 
need for extra food — which is a purely theoretical con- 
clusion — now guides the fattening of cattle. By keeping 
cattle warm, fodder is saved. Experiments of physiolo- 
gists have proved, not only that change of diet is bene- 
ficial, but that digestion is facilitated by a mixture of in- 
gredients in each meal. Both these truths are now influ- 
encing cattle-feeding. In the keen race of competition, 
the farmer who has a competent knowledge of the laws of 
animal and vegetable physiology and of agricultural chem- 
istry, will surely distance the one who gropes along by 
guess and by tradition. A general diffusion of scientific 
knowledge saves the community from innumerable wasteful 
and foolish mistakes. In England, not many years ago, 
the partners in a large mining company were ruined from 
not knowing that a certain fossil belonged to the old red 
sandstone, below which coal is never found. In another 
enterprise, £20,000 were lost in the prosecution of a scheme 
for collecting the alcohol that distils from bread in baking, 
all of which might have been saved, had the parties known 



ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS. 271 

that less than one hundredth part by weight of the flour is 
changed in fermentation. 

But it is not necessary to multiply illustrations. Sufiice 
it to say, in conclusion, I hold it to be a most manifest 
truth, that the general education of a community increases 
largely its material wealth, both by the direct eflect which 
knowledge has upon individuals in making them individu- 
ally more productive, and by the increased control which 
the diffusion of knowledge gives to mankind over the 
powers of nature. A nation or a state is wisely economical 
which spends largely and even lavishly upon popular 
education. 



XXX. 

WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

MY last chapter, like the first, begins with a question. 
Strange to say, no satisfactory definition of educa- 
tion has yet been given, nor has a definition of it often 
been even attempted. The literature *of the subject is 
copious enough. But writers have busied themselves 
mainly with details, with methods of teaching, and so 
forth. A few, of a more philosophical turn of mind, have 
discussed the principles of the subject, and among these 
some have undertaken to develop their theories from the 
true starting-point of a definition. But among all these, 
from Plato, who was the earliest systematic writer on the 
subject, to Herbert Spencer, the latest and the most pre- 
tentious, not one has given a definition of it which is not 
open to objection. 

It may seem presumptuous, perhaps, to undertake 
again that in which so many have failed. But there can 
be no harm in making at least an endeavor. What then 
are some of the elements which enter into our idea of 
education ? 

To educate is, in the first place, to develop. It is to 
draw out and strengthen the powders and give them right 

direction. It is, therefore, something more than merely 

272 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 273 

imparting knowledge. Knowledge is to the child's mind 
what food is to the body. Each is a means to an end. It 
is to cause growth. As by the proper use of food and 
exercise the limbs and muscles expand, and acquire their 
full and appointed size, symmetry, and strength, so by 
acquiring and using knowledge of various kinds, the vari- 
ous faculties of the mind attain their full power and pro- 
portion. For this reason mainly the pure mathematics 
and the ancient languages, Latin and Greek, have held 
their place in almost every course of liberal study, not 
because the knowledge of these branches is likely to be 
called for in ordinary professional business, but because 
the study of these branches is supposed to be particularly 
adapted to develop and invigorate certain important 
qualities of the mind. This development of the powers, 
then, is the first element involved in a just idea of 
education. 

But, secondly, nature plainly indicates a certain order 
to be observed in the development of the faculties. " First 
the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 
So in the human plant. The time for the efflorescence of 
some of the faculties is in early youth. Other faculties 
make little growth till near the age of manhood. A wise 
educator will carefully observe these facts, and not waste 
his energies and mar his work, either by attempting a 
premature development of those faculties which God 
seems to have meant to ripen later, or by neglecting to 
draw out and train in childhood those faculties which then 
most naturally and aptly spring into vigorous growth. 
Youth, for instance, is the season, of all others, when the 



274 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

memory is to be cultivated ; the season of all others, when 
the instinctive principle of faith is to have free play. So, 
too, the moral and emotional faculties may receive the 
first germs of their development at a very early stage in 
the history of the human being. The education of this 
part of our nature begins, indeed, with the first smile of 
recognition that passes between the infant and its mother. 
Other faculties and powers, as the reason and the judg- 
ment, for instance, come to maturity nearer the age of 
manhood, and the normal period for their cultivation is 
accordingly near the end, rather than near the beginning, 
of an educational course. It is not, however, my object 
here to mark out an order for the development of the 
faculties, but only to note that there is such an order, and 
that the observance of this order is a most important ele- 
ment in our idea of what education is. 

The next element in this idea is that a certain propor- 
tion and symmetry be observed in the development of the 
powers. Perhaps it might not be strictly accurate to say 
that any faculty may be cultivated too highly. Yet there 
certainly is an excess whenever one faculty or power is 
cultivated quite out of proportion to the other faculties 
and powers. A man in Boston a few years ago, by direct- 
ing his attention exclusively for a long time to the single 
act of lifting, educated his body to the power of lifting 
enormous weights. But this power was gained at the ex- 
pense of agility, grace, and many other bodily qualities 
quite as important as that of lifting weights. So the 
mental faculties may become one-sided by injudicious 
training. The memory may be inordinately developed at 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 275 

the expense of the reasonmg power, the reason at the ex- 
pense of the imagination, the feelings at the expense of 
the judgment, the mind at the expense of the body, the 
body at the expense of the mind. In all right education, 
therefore, the faculties are to be developed, not only in 
due order, but in due proportion. 

The next element that enters into our idea is that of a 
proper comprehensiveness. The educator must bear in 
mind that the being committed to his care is one of a 
complex nature, and that every part of this complex 
nature is to receive its due attention. Physical education 
is included in his duties as well as mental, mental as well 
as moral and religious. No part is to be neglected. He 
should aim to secure for his subject full bodily health, 
agility, strength, symmetry, and power of endurance. 
The bodily senses are capable of a degree of cultivation 
that few seem to be aware of. Perhaps, in our ordinary 
schemes of education, no part of our complex nature is so 
inadequately provided for, so almost ignored, as the phys- 
ical. But, as in regard to the other points that have been 
raised, so here, it is not my object so much to particularize 
the several parts of human nature that require attention, 
as to recognize distinctly the fact that we are thus complex, 
and that the business of the educator is necessarily a 
many-sided one, requiring most varied knowledge and 
experience. 

But there is one important limitation to be observed 
here, otherwise our definition would be seriously amiss. 
In many works on education, it is stated, without qualifi- 
cation, that we ought to give to all our powers the fullest 



276 IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 

development of which they are capable. If we were un- 
fallen angels, the rule might perhaps be a safe one. But 
for fallen human beings, it certainly needs some limitation. 
We have faculties and powers, not a few, which we need 
to repress rather than to cultivate. Are we to give the 
fullest development of which they are capable, to anger, 
envy, jealousy, cunning, avarice, and lust ? To state the 
question is to answer it. It is not every faculty of the 
child, therefore, that is to be developed, but only those 
parts of his nature which are good and desirable, those by 
which he can best discharge his duties to God and attain 
his highest excellence as a man. 

Let us now gather up the several ideas which have been 
suggested, and see if we cannot compress them into some 
brief formula, as a definition of education, which, if not 
perfect and exhaustive of the subject, shall be both more 
comprehensive and more precise than those now afloat. 

Definition. — Education is developing, in due order 
and proportion, whatever is good and desirable in human 
nature. 




W^i 
^ 




ODEL WEXT BOOKS 




FOR 



SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES. 







•S^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^'^^^-^^^^^^m 




A NEW EDITION OP THE CLASSICS. 



CHASE & STUART'S CLASSICAL SERIES. 

EDITED BY 

THOMAS CHASE, A.M., GEORGE STUART, A.M., 

PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE, h PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE, 

Haverfnrd College, Central High School, 

Penna. Philada. 



REFERENCES TO 

HAKKNESS'S LATIN GRAMMAR, 

AND 

ANDREWS & STODDARD'S LATIN GRAMMAR. 



The publication of this edition of the Classics was suggested 
by tbe constantly increasing demand by teachers for an edition 
which, by judicious notes, would give to the student the assist- 
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ties of syntax, &c., and yet would require him to make faithful 
use of his grammar and dictionary. 

It is believed that this Classical Series needs only to be known 
to insure its very general use. The publishers claim for it 
peculiar merit, and beg leave to call attention to the following 
important particulars: 

The purity of the texts. 

The clearness and conciseness of the notes, and their adapta- 
tion to the wants of students. 

The beauty of the type and paper. 

The handsome style of binding. 

The convenience of the shape and size. 

The low price at which the volumes are sold. 

The preparation of the whole Series is the original ivork of 
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The texts are not mere reprints, but are based upon a careful 
and painstaking comparison of all the most improved editions, with 
constant reference to the authority of the best manuscripts. 



No pains have been spared to make the notes accurate, clear, 
and helpful to the learner. Points of geography, history, my- 
thology, and antiquities are explained in accordance with the 
views of the best German scholars. The references to the 
grammars most in use in this country, viz. : 

HARKNESS'S LATIN GRAMMAR 

AND 

ANDREWS & STODDARD'S LATIN GRAMMAR, 

is in itself an advantage to be gained only by the use of this 
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Desirous of affording Professors and Teachers of Latin 
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The Series, when complete, will consist of 

CyESAR'S COMMENTARIES, 
VIRGIL'S i^lNEID, 
CICERO'S ORATIONS, 
HORACE, SALLUST and LIVY, 

Of which there are now reaiy the following, viz. : 

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^ With Explanatory Notes, a Vocabulary, Geo- 
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to the sources of such information as is requisite to a thorough 
understanding of the author. 

VIRGIL'S VENEID. With Explanatory Notes, Me- 
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Index of Proper Names, &c. By Prof. Thomas 
Chase. Price by mail, postpaid, $1.50. Per 
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grammars most in use, and explanations are furnished of pas- 
sages difficult of interpretation, of peculiarities of syntax, and 
of such points of history, geography, mythology, and antiquities, | 
as require elucidation. A metrical index has been added, in 
which the chief difficulties of scanning are solved. One thing 
is presumed throughout, — that the student will make a faithful 
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scholars are made. 

CICERO and HORACE will be issued about Dec. 1868. 
SALLUST and LIVY, during the following year. 

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be eagerly sought after by every student of the classics. 



A MANUAL OF ELOCUTION. Founded upon the 
Philosophy of the Human Voice, with Classified 
Illustrations, Suggested by and Arranged to meet 
the Practical Difficulties of Instruction. By M. 
S. Mitchell. Price by mail, postpaid, $1.50. 
Per dozen, by express, $13.50. 

The compiler cannot conceal the hope that this glimpse of our 
general literature may tempt to individual research among its 
treasures, so varied and inexha.ustible ; — that this text-book 
for the school-room may become not only teacher, but friend, to 
those in whose hands it is placed, and while aiding, through 
systematic development and training of the elocutionary powers 
of the pupil, to overcome many of the practical diflBculties of 
instruction, may accomplish a higher work in the cultivation and 
refinement of character. 

To afford teachers an idea of the character of the work, we 
append a list of the 

SUBJECTS TREATED OF. 

Articulation, Pronunciation, Accent, Emphasis, Modulation, 
Melody of Speech, Pitch, Tone, Inflections, Sense, Cadence, 
Force, Stress, Grammatical and Rhetorical Pauses, Movement, 
Reading of Poetry, Faults in the Reading of Poetry; Action, 
Attitude, Analysis of the Principles of Gestures, and Oratory. 

Among the gems of literature collected in this volume may be 
named the following, which will give a general idea of the char- 
acter of the selections for practice, of which the volume is 
largely composed. 

A Psalm of Life. 

Address at Gettysburg. 

Barbara Frietchie. 

Bonny Kelmeny. 

Bugle Song. 

Charge of the Light Brigade. 

Death of Little Nell. 

Dies Irse. 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 

Excelsior. 

Godiva. 

Invocation to Light. 

Laus Deo. 

The American Flag. 



Oh ! why should the Spirit of 

Mortal be Proud ? 
The Battle of Ivry. 
The Bells. 

The Bridge of Sighs. 
The Great Bell Roland. 
The Mantle of St. John de Matha. 
The Raven. 

The Soldier from Bingen. 
The Song of the Shirt. 
Union and Libe.rty. 
Woman's Education. 
Work. 



THE MODEL DEFINER, witli Sentences showing 

^ the Proper Use of Words. An Elementary 
Work, containing Definitions and Etymology for 
the Little Ones. By A. C. Webb. Price by 
mail, postpaid, 25 cents. Per dozen, by express, 
$2.16. 



T 



HE MODEL ETYMOLOGY. G^iving not only the 
Definitions, Etymology, and Analysis, but that 
w|iich can be obtained only from an intimate 
acquaintance with the best Authors, viz. : The 
Correct Use of Words. By A. C. Webb. Price 
by mail, postpaid, 60 cents. Per dozen, by ex- 
press, $5.40. 

The importance of words cannot be over-estimated. Knowledge 
can be imparted and received only by the medium of words, cor- 
rectly used and properly understood. The basis of a good edu- 
cation must be laid with words, well chosen, properly arranged, 
and firmly implanted in the mind. From the richness of the Eng- 
lish Language, which gives many words to the same meaning, and 
many and diverse meanings to the same word, the proper use of a 
word cannot be deduced from its vieaning. How, then, is the 
knowledge of the use of words to be imparted to children? 
Either by the teacher, or by conversation and reading. By the 
latter method the knowledge acquired is limited in extent; and 
as it is entirely dependent on the power of observation, the im- 
pressions received are faint and ill-defined, and the conclusions 
arrived at, frequently incorrect. The practice of Arithmetic 
might possibly be left to such teaching, inasmuch as Arithmetic 
is an exact science based on fixed principles, from which correct 
reasoning must deduce correct results. But no reasoning can 
show to the child who has learned ''Deduce, to draw," that he 
must not say, " I tried to deduce the horse from the stable ; " or, 
''Deciduous, falling." "The boy, deciduous from the window, 
was killed." The importance and difficulty of the work de- 
mands that it shall not be left to the uncertainties of home teach- 



8 

ing. Tlie labor involved forbids that this essential part of edu- 
cation shall be imposed on the parent. Like Arithmetic, or any 
other department of knowledge, it should be performed by the 
teacher, in the time specially set apart for mental training. The 
plan adopted in the Model Word-Book Series is not new. All 
good Dictionaries illustrate the meaning by a Model. To quote 
from a good author, a sentence containing the word, as proof of 
its correct use, is the only authority allowed. A simple trial of 
the work either by requiring the child to form sentences similar 
to those given, or by memorizing the sentences as models for 
future use, will convince any one of the following advantages 
to be derived from the Model Word-Book Series: 

1. Saving of Time. 

2. Increased Knowledge of Words. 

3. Ease to Teacher and Scholar. 

4. A Knowledge of the Correct Use of Words. 



THE 



YOUNG STUDENT'S COMPANION ; or, Eie- 

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from English into French. By M. A. Longstreth, 
Principal of a Seminary for Young Ladies, Phi- 
ladelphia. Price by mail, postpaid, $L00. Per 
dozen, by express, $9.00. 

The object of this little work is to present to the young stu- 
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in a clear and simple manner, and, at the same time, to lessen 
the fatigue incurred by the teacher in giving repeated verbal 
explanations of the most important rules of etymology. No 
attempt has been made to teach the syntax of the language, 
with the exception of a few fundamental rules ; neither have 
many idioms been introduced ; the aim of the compiler being to 
avoid whatever might perplex or confuse. 

This little work, it will be remembered, is not intended to 
take the place of a Grammar, but to prepare the pupil, by care- 
ful drilling, for larger and more comprehensive treatises; and 
it is believed that any child, who can distinguish the dilFerent 



parts of speech in English, will be able to understand and learn 
the lessons without difficulty; and that, if they are thoroughly 
learned, the succeeding course of French study will be much 
facilitated. In its preparation, the best authorities have been 
carefully consulted and followed, and assistance has been kindly 
furnished by several Professors of the French language, whose 
experience in teaching enables them to judge of the wants of 
the young student. 



MARTINDALE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED 

STATES. From the Discovery of America to 
the close of the late Rebellion. By Joseph 0. 
Martindale, M. D., Principal of the Madison 
Grammar School, Philadelphia. Price by mail, 
postpaid, 60 cents. Per dozen, by express, $5.40. 

The want of a History suitable for the Schoolroom has long 
been felt by educators. In most instances, the Histories pre- 
sented have been too much encumbered with details of but little 
service to the pupils. This has been one of tlie causes which has 
prevented History from being one of the usual branches of study 
in our Common Schools outside of cities and towns ; none can so 
well appreciate the difficulties which have surrounded this sub- 
ject as the teacher. Another cause which has precluded the 
study of History has been the high price of all the text-hooks 
on this subject. The very low price of the present treatise will 
obviate this difficulty. The author of this compend, a man of 
large experience in the schoolroom, deserves the thanks of 
teachers and scholars, for the concise and succinct form in 
which he has treated this much neglected subject; ignoring all 
that does not properly appertain to the important events of our 
Nation's existence, he has given us all that should be memorized, 
and in so agreeable a form as to be thoroughly mastered with 
but little effort. 

With this book in his hand, the scholar can in a single 
school-term obtain as complete a knowledge of the History of 
the United States as has heretofore required double the time 
and effort. 



10 

Teachers who are anxious to have their pupils proficient in 
this subject, or who are themselves desirous of reviewing the 
main points of History in order to pass a creditable examina- 
tion, will find this the book for their purposes, and it will commend 
itself to the live teacher as a book long needed. The want of such 
a work suggested its preparation, and we are satisfied that in 
every schoolroom its advent will be welcomed by both teacher 
and pupil. 

The unprecedented success which has attended this work 
since its publication is the best recommendation of its merits, 
more than Twenty Thousand Copies having been sold during the 
past year. It is indorsed by prominent educators, is used in 
over fifty Normal Schools, and in hundreds of cities, towns, and 
townships throughout the entire country. Teachers, Directors, 
and all others interested in Elementary Education are invited to 
examine the book. 



DARKER'S GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LAN- 

GUAGE. Based upon an Analysis of the English 
Sentence. With copious Examples and Exer- 
cises in Parsing and the Correction of False Syn- 
tax, and an Appendix, containing Critical and 
Explanatory Notes, and Lists of Peculiar and 
Exceptional Forms. For the use of Schools and 
Academies, and those who write. By Wm. Henry 
Parker, Principal of Ringgold Grammar School, 
Philadelphia. Price by mail, postpaid, $1.25. 

Prepared by a Grammar School Principal, and arranged in 
the manner that many years of research and actual experience 
in the schoolroom have demonstrated to be the best for teach- 
ing, this book commends itself to teachers as a simple, progres- 
sive, and consistent treatise on Grammar, the need of which has 
so long been recognized. We ask for it a careful and critical 
examination. The thorough acquaintance of the author with 
his subject, and his practical knowledge of the difficulties which 
beset the teacher in the use of the text-book, and the necessity 



11 

for the teacher's supplying deficiencies and omissions and 
amending the text to suit constructions found daily in parsing, 
and in other practical exercises in Grammar, have enabled him 
to prepare a work which will, on trial, be found a labor-saving 
aid to both teacher and pupil. 



TO TEACHERS 



The Publishers desire to call the attention of Teachers to their 
List of SCHOOL ROLL-BOOKS, REGISTERS, GRADE BOOKS, &c. 
These have been prepared by an experienced, practical Teacher, 
with the view of meeting a very pressing want of the school- 
room. It is hoped that in their preparation most of the defects 
usually found in school records have been avoided. 

THE MODEL ROLL-BOOK, NO. 1. 

For the Use of Schools. Containing a Record of Attendance, 
Punctuality, Deportment, Orthography, Reading, Penmanship, 
Intellectual Arithmetic, Practical Arithmetic, Geography, Gram- 
mar, Parsing, and History, and several blanks for special studies 
not enumerated. Price, $3.50, by express. 

THE MODEL ROLL-BOOK, NO. 2. 

For the Use of High Schools, Academies, and Seminaries. 
Containing a Record of all the Studies mentioned in Roll-Book, 
No. 1, together with Elocution, Algebra, Geometry, Composition, 
French, Latin, Philosophy, Physiology, and several blanks for 
special studies not enumerated. Price, $3.50, by express. 

These Roll-Books are in use in the leading Schools of Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, and 
very extensively in Select and High Schools throughout the coun- 
try They will, on examination, be found to be the most complete 
and practical yet published. All teachers who use them speak 
of them with unqualified approval; once used, they will never 
be relinquished. 



T 



12 

HE MODEL POCKET REGISTER AND GRADE- 

BOOK. -^ Roll-Book. Eegister and Record com- 
bined. 

Adapted to any grade of School, from Primary to College. 
Handsomely and durably bound in fine Cloth. Price by mail, 
postpaid, 65 cents. Per dozen, by express, $6.00. 

Prof. E. A. Sheldon, of the New York State Normal School, 
and author of "Lessons on Objects," and "Elementary Instruc- 
tion," says of this book: 

"Your Model Pocket Register is just the thing every teacher 
needs. I shall never again be without one." 



JHE 



MODEL SCHOOL-DIARY. 



Designed as an aid in securing the co-operation of parents. 
It consists of a Record of the Attendance, Deportment, Recita- 
tions, &c., of a Scholar, for every day in the week. At the 
close of the week it is to be sent to the parent or guardian, for 
his examination and signature. Teachers will find in this 
Diary .an article that has long been needed. Its low cost will 
insure its general use. Copies will be mailed to teachers for 
examination, postpaid, on receipt of ten cents. Price per dozen, 
by mail, postpaid, $1.00. Per dozen, by express, 84 cents. 



R 



EWARDS OF MERIT. 



As there are many teachers who make use of these incentives 
to study, we have endeavored to meet the demand, with what 
success the teacher can judge after seeing our specimens. They 
are printed on the best quality of Bristol card, colored in gold, 
silver, crimson, ultra-marine, and emerald, and are executed in 
the highest style of the lithographic art. They are chaste, 
ornate, and beautiful, and need but be seen to be appreciated. 
The teacher will, of course, not connect these gems of art with 
the common colored cards in vogue. Price per set by mail, 
postpaid, 35 cents. 

Please address the Publishers, 

ELDEEDGE & BEOTHEE, 

17 & 19 South Sixth Street, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



i 




